Expert: Terry Thatcher Waltz - 7/5/2006

Question
Mrs. Thatcher-Waltz,

I am a internet/graphics designer looking to expand my business in the international market. While my connections with the Spanish languauge is strong, I would like to find out if interpretive software is an option in the Chinese language. While I am willing to become familiar with the language, I will never be "up to par" due to not being in the environment etc.

Any info will be helpful,

Thank you  

Answer
If you mean machine translation, or some sort of program you could use on your PC or other device to translate from Chinese to English and vice versa, the answer IMHO is "no". Currently, translation software works very well on the sample paragraphs supplied with the package, but not very well at all on real text. If you're a professional designer, you would be setting yourself up to look very silly indeed if you relied on such a package and it made a "mistake" or two. Just my opinion -- and as a translator and interpreter I suppose I'm biased -- but there's a reason we're not yet out of business!  :-)