WoodMarvels.com going Chinese (slowly)!

I have many goals this year for WoodMarvels.com and among the more ambitious ones is translating all my books into Chinese as well as the website. The reasons for this include:

• YouTube.com doesn’t work in China so all videos will have to be “doubled” meaning you see both the YouTube.com video and Youku.com (or Toudou.com)… I knew this was coming so I’ve been uploading to both sites for some time now.
• Online translation systems do a POOR job translating, just try navigating a foreign website using Google Translate or Yahoo Babel Fish… this is not the customer experience I want them to have.
• China is a HUGE market, it has it’s issues (language won’t be one of them shortly) and orders are starting to come-in!
• Communication regarding licensing and other related matters need to be conducted in the customer’s native tongue – I spent a year in China speaking to many Chinese people who had good English but soon found-out that speaking ability doesn’t equal comprehension.

So, there are several ways to accomplish this, one is to duplicate the website to be 100% Chinese… this is a pain in the ass on several fronts… each time I spend time doing an update, the work is multiplied by two! There is geotagging and other types of systems but I want to keep the site as simple as possible for both me and the customer – besides, Chinese people don’t just live in China!

So I’ve decided, for the time being, to simply add Chinese throughout the existing website architecture… so don’t worry if you start seeing Chinese pop-up here and there… the site hasn’t been hacked… it’s just evolving to take hold of new opportunities! The next language up is probably French and/or Spanish… have to conquer the woodworking world one language at a time!