Chinese online merchants and e-commerce sites have significantly increased their sales efforts in English, Russian and Arabic speaking markets between 2014 and 2015, research by Israel-based online translation agency One Hour Translation has found.
One Hour Translation analyzed more than 10,000 translation projects performed over the past year for e-commerce websites around the world. The company found that Chinese interest in these markets is particularly apparent around record breaking sales dates such as Singles Day (the Chinese singles holiday) on November 11, Black Friday on November 27, Cyber Monday on November 30 and leading up to Christmas on December 25. This increased effort is demonstrated, among other things, by funneling more resources toward localization and the translation of Chinese websites to foreign languages.
Between 2014 and 2015, requests from online Chinese merchants and e-commerce sites for translations from Mandarin to English rose by 116%, while requests for translation from Chinese to Russian rose 81% and requests for translation from Chinese to Arabic rose 52%.
English-language websites have also increased their efforts in Russian, Arabic and Mandarin-Chinese speaking markets, albeit at a lower rate. Between 2014 and 2015, requests from online English-language merchants for translations to Russian rose by 39%, while requests for translation from English to Arabic rose 21% and requests for translation from English to Mandarin-Chinese rose 17%. Conversely, requests for translations from English to Korean rose only by 5%, while English to German increased only 2%.
One Hour Translation CEO and cofounder Ofer Shoshan said, "Over the past few years we have witnessed a revolution in the world of e-commerce and have experienced cross-continent phenomena such as the successful penetration of Alibaba into the US market. These market changes significantly affect the languages and audiences targeted by the e-commerce companies. The heads of the e-commerce corporations in China have noticed that Russian and American customers are "rushing" to make purchases on the Chinese websites as they become aware of the vast selection of Chinese products sold at a fraction of the price compared to their local markets. This is a primary reason why Chinese websites are translated so comprehensively to English and Russian, and over the past year even into Arabic."
He added, "Another phenomenon that we have noticed in our research is that e-commerce corporations are encouraging their online merchants to appeal to global audiences by translating the thousands of product descriptions in their online "stores" into foreign languages. The demand for translations is not created only by the e-commerce corporations, but also by the smaller merchants who sell their wares on large sites such as eBay and Taobao. This is one of the reasons that we anticipate that the global demand for translation of e-commerce material will significantly rise in the coming years."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on November 12, 2015
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