Meet CSN's Shaun Daggett

continued

I spent many weeks looking for ways to network and market myself to potential customers with no success. So, I decided to create my own—The ClientSide Newsletter.

CSN started out as a simple newsletter where I authored articles on subjects that I felt would help clients improve some areas of their internal operations, from localization contract negotiations and vendor management solutions to developing product roadmaps and how to accurately budget and forecast across product lines. On October 15, 2001, the first issue of The ClientSide Newsletter went out to a little over 800 contacts I had developed over the years. Over the next few months, this newsletter was gaining momentum and being passed around in a way never expected. By December of that year, I had over 2500 “subscribers” asking for back issues and future editions. The industry was not only accepting what I was putting out there, they were pulling the rope of this newsletter demanding more and more.

Potential advertisers started to approach me and ask for ad space and offer to contribute white papers and their own content. Other clients as well offered to contribute and share their success stories. This thing had a life of its own and I had to make some decisions as to what to do with it. And to be frank, it scared the daylights out of me! I was not a publisher, nor had any experience running or managing anything like this—but I was at a critical juncture and needed to decide how to manage this or cut it loose. It was taking all my time and I had yet to secure one single consulting project for any clients! (Ironically, I was hired as a part time consultant for a leading service provider to help them with their marketing and branding.)

So… I approached a company I was consulting for and made a proposal: hire me as a full-time employee, and take on this newsletter as an internal communication vehicle. Remember, we were now in the throes of an economic recession and this company just couldn’t take on an employee, so the answer was “no.” I thought to myself, “I will use this as a hook to get a real job and make the same proposal to another company that I would like to work for!” It was a brilliant plan, but just as fruitless as the first attempt. I know you are thinking to yourself, “Did he just say he tried to get rid of CSN twice with no success?” Yes, honestly I just wanted a job. I had a family to support and there was no certainty with this newsletter as a business (I wasn’t making any income from it at that time), and I had no experience running such a venture. Nevertheless, there were no jobs to be had and I had to find a way to make this work. Not just work for me, but work for the industry.

I set about finding “angels” in the industry like Ben Martin from JD Edwards and Fiona Agnew from Novell—both leaders and innovators on the client side of the industry—to help get this thing off the ground with sponsorship and financial contributions. I started to network and did research into why this newsletter was so successful, and what was missing from the industry that I could fill with this vehicle, and all the other areas that CSN now fills. Armed with market research and a solid business plan to bring CSN and ClientSide News Magazine to the market, I approached many people throughout the industry for support—and got it. I pulled back from publishing the newsletter, as it was to develop into the CSN, with its first Expo and magazine. In early 2002 CSN held its first expo in Aspen, Colorado and published the first REAL issue of ClientSide News Magazine in April of that year.

And I am proud to say that Shelly and Lisa at McElroy were the first contract advertisers we signed on board and have remained our biggest supporters today. This was one of those rare business starts where I created a marketing vehicle for my consulting services and instead of the consulting taking off, the newsletter did. In the rare instances where something grows on its own, you have to recognize the opportunity at hand and run with the ball. ClientSide News is one of those rare companies that the industry demanded, and I was lucky enough to be able to carry it forward. It has been a tremendous ride to this point!

What are the challenges a publisher faces?
The biggest challenge is finding good content. For so many years in this industry, press releases were cheap advertising. Every press release put out in this industry was published. So, filtering through all of the mostly vast and meaningless press releases to find something interesting, newsworthy and relevant to clients is a real challenge. Another challenge is getting clients to share some of their internal success stories. When clients implement a new solution, develop an internal process that has a real impact on their time to market or some major cost savings, we love to hear about it. But often times adding authoring to their workload is more than they can handle, or it is difficult to get approval to share their intellectual property.

ClientSide News is involved in other activities as well, such as events, education, reports, mentoring, and technology. How do these relate to one another?
With any professional association dedicated to supporting a specific community or demographic within their community, you will find a very similar structure to CSN. Events, educational workshops, industry analysis and reports, as well as specific publications like our magazine and newsletters—each of these solutions and offerings is dedicated to helping the client-side localization professional stay on top of his or her profession and excel.

Your experience places you in the position of knowing the client, vendor and news sides of translation and localization. How has this uncommon set of experiences shaped your perspective?
It is very true, my job is to stay “in the know” about everything going on in this industry, and everything that may have impact on this industry. I feel overwhelmed by the responsibility sometimes and just the sheer volume of information I process each day. But it is very rewarding and very interesting to be in that position.

What have you learned that surprised you the most?
The thing that has surprised me the most about our industry is how incredibly small the world really is how quickly information disseminates in this industry. But the real shock is how EVERYONE knows Renato! [Editor's note: for those of you who are less familiar with our industry, Renato Beninatto, along with Shaun, is another key thought leader in the translation and localization world.]

This month’s issue of E-Buzz is focused on doing business with China, especially for those who may be considering it for the first time. Do you have any thoughts on how a company just entering the global market rapidly matures its operations, particularly in China?
That is a great question. I think often times clients find themselves focusing on China for all the right reasons, but don’t have all the right plans in place before they start focusing on localization for this market. China has many cultural, language and technology challenges as it relates to localization and my advice for first timers entering this market is simply to ask for help. That help is best found with their localization or translation provider. I think one of the biggest mistakes is that first timers underestimate all of these complex challenges, and fail to clearly scope out what it will take from every side of the equation.

What are some pitfalls and rookie mistakes to avoid?
Holding things too close to the vest. Many clients are, for whatever reason, reluctant to communicate effectively with their vendors all their needs. Clients work to keep as much work in house as possible to reduce external (tangible) expenses and don’t realize the soft costs, delays in time to market and slower pace of internal maturation that this causes. New clients need to recognize that localization is a business process that will always be outsourced, and work with their vendors to establish a BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) model in a way that fosters overall savings on both hard and soft costs, provides faster time to market and a rapid maturation of their internal workflow model. All clients new to localization should ask themselves this question: “Are we in the business of translation and localization?” If the answer is no, and 100% of the time it should be, then figure out what makes sense to outsource and work closely and openly with your service provider to make that happen in a way that is beneficial to all.

Are there cost effective ways to adapt existing processes that weren’t originally designed for globalization?
I think when we, as an industry, break out of our cocoon and look at mainstream practices in functional areas that overlap—and adopt some of the mainstream solutions and apply them to our needs, we are in good shape. However, too often in our industry we feel we need to reinvent the wheel. After all, localization is complicated and hard, we have to work out a special way of handling things… or do we? I think we need to start mainstreaming more as an industry and stop falling on back on old habits of assuming everything for the GILT (Globalization, Internationalization, Localization, Translation) industry needs to be custom-made.

Shaun, it’s been a pleasure talking with you. Is there a final word you’d like to leave our readers with today?
Yes, there absolutely is: Thank you.

This industry has been very kind to me in this endeavor. While it takes effort and focus to deliver on a promise, if the industry didn’t pull so hard to make CSN what it is today, I might be bartending instead of publishing CSN! Back

Read case studies to learn more about McElroy’s DTP and localization solutions.

A localization professor’s impressions of China

Dr. Tim Altanero

continued

To many people, the hutongs are the heart and soul of China, the places where neighbors meet and daily business of China takes place. In Beijing, at least, a movement has begun to preserve the hutongs but the implementation of the preservation seems as damaging as the wholesale destruction of the neighborhoods.

Preserved hutongs in Beijing are now tourist traps, with bicycle rickshaw tours plowing the sterilized alleyways past the newly prosperous residents, thanks to the tourists. Little of the old ways remain; most of the old business is gone.

To illustrate how rapidly change can come, in March of 2006, I happily wandered through the vibrant Dashilar hutong complex of streets, admiring the many shops, restaurants, and throngs of people. By August the area was largely in ruin, replaced by mound of rubble that will give rise to another megastructure that will dehumanize and neuter the area.

Back in Jinan, much the same is taking place, but without the tourists, the urgency to preserve history is muted. Local residents have mixed feelings because the lure of improved housing sometimes overshadows what might be lost in the transition, among other things.

Change is probably the most enduring constant in present day China. It is trumpeted everywhere and there is a strident optimism for the future. The tv counts down the days until the 2008 Olympics open in Beijing. Tv commercials show photos of the chronicle of people’s lives, scored with a melancholy tune, captioned with “see people change, see China change.” Cities advertise their attractions with modern bridges, glittering skylines, swank beaches, and so forth with hardly a hint of any historical attractions.

Along with the rush to modernity, I am again struck by the incongruities surrounding me. I’m riding a weakly air-conditioned city bus and I’m just about the only passenger because it costs 2 yuan (25 cents) to ride in an a/c bus versus 1 for the normal busses. A fellow passenger is watching a music video on an impossibly small device. Another is sending a text message, and another is carrying a bundle of empty plastic bottles.

I’m on my way to the “technology mart” – a collection of narrow, traffic-snarled streets fronted by dusty, poorly lit buildings filled with small vendors. Amidst the skeletal remains of discarded computer housings and old fax machines is a startling array of products and innovations at incredible prices. It’s next to impossible to find someone who speaks English there, so I bring a friend.

This day I’m looking for speakers, but wind up spending the entire day perusing the aisles. I am amazed by the cell phones and the many functions they have. A sleek cell phone is a status symbol for many young Chinese, so the selection is wide.

I’ve always wanted an iPod, but not knowing if I’d use it enough to justify the price stopped me from getting one in the US. They’re incredibly cheap in China and have more features, sizes, designs, and formats than I’ve ever scene. I leave that purchase for another day when I can research them on the internet and be more sure of what I’m looking at.

Moving on, I find a rubber keyboard with those famous Chinese mis-translated instructions. You can apparently submerge the keyboard in several centimeters of water and still type on it. You can roll it up and bend it, among other things. $5.25. The instructions advise against “roasting in oven, ” “slicing with knife” and a few other incomprehensible benefits of the product – “if more dirt can wash into the pond,” “Could not sleep at night, take effect on family,” and “If we are not careful Sprinkle with coffee, beverages, water need not worry.” OK, so it’s a neat little item but what I find interesting is that despite the near total absence of comprehensible English, the keyboard is totally standard. It has a standard US-English layout and plugs into a standard USB port. The product wasn’t designed for the US market, but fits right in because the Chinese use that keyboard layout as standard for typing in Chinese using a little piece of free software from Microsoft (and elsewhere) called an IME (Input Method Editor).

I pass all kinds of things you can plug into your USB port, from little fans to reading lights, ladybug-shaped mice to multifunctional webcams. I make a list items to research and come back for on payday.

Back at the apartment, withered by the intense heat, high humidity, dust, and industrial pollution, my friend and I collapse in the living room soaking up the a/c. We decide to watch tv, but the lone English channel is repeating the same programs I saw in the morning. I pull up a US tv schedule on the internet and we download last night’s CSI and the latest episode of American Idol from a Chinese site that seems to have the shows almost the instant they are broadcast in the US. The download speed is so fast that we download the shows in less time than it takes to play them on the computer. Later we download a movie that came out in the US last week. Free from various Chinese sites and excellent quality.

All this is possible and apparently common, yet when I step outside to grab a bite from a street vendor, I see the man who repairs umbrellas sitting on his impossibly low chair waiting for a customer. The lady with the sewing machine right there on the sidewalk puts a button on a blouse. There’s a man with watermelons spread out on a tarp, another man with a few tools and inner tubes to fix your bike, a lady selling roasted corn from her bicycle, and a guy frying whole fish next to the median.

It all seems so quaint and maybe primitive, but on closer inspection the lady selling the corn has an auto-repeating loudspeaker. An electric bicycle goes by. Then a guy with a plastic bag of beer and an iPod.

The blistering heat of the Chinese summer creates a sense of repose that is palpable. People nap at their little stands, in the back of pickup trucks, against their bikes, on cardboard spread across the sidewalk. Some bring a lounge chair to the sidewalk. Just wake the vendor if you need something. It feels like a lazy summer, but the work doesn’t cease. China is open 7 days a week – even the banks are open every day.

When payday arrives, I head back to the technology mart, having researched my iPods and such. What I see is strangely familiar yet not quite. The brands look familiar, right down to the names – almost. Unis and Konkas sit next to Newmans and Lenovos. That little iPod that’s $200 in the US is $30 here and doesn’t just play music… it plays full-length movies on a little color screen, holds about 500 songs, acts as a flash drive and e-book reader, records voice, plays games, holds your photo album, and speaks 8 languages, fortunately one of which is the almost-English that is common around China. And it’s smaller than a credit card.

There is an even more functional model about the size of a disposable camera but much thinner. This one does all the above but also takes pictures and video with 4x zoom and 5 megapixels. It doesn’t speak English as well as the other device, so it may even brew tea for all I know.

Around Shandong province, the complexity of China’s rapid change is startling. As Jinan tears itself down to rebuild as a sparkling, modern metropolis of business and culture, other cities in the province take different routes. Qufu is attempting to capitalize on its UNESCO World Heritage status but seems to be at odds with itself. As home of Confucius, it is studded with temples and monuments to the great thinker, yet all of them are cordoned off behind impenetrable walls, their high entrance fees beyond the means of the local populace. Thus the heritage of the city is reserved for the monied, incongruous with the great thinker’s intentions, perhaps.

Weihei, an overnight ferry ride from Korea, has thoroughly modernized, turning itself into a Cancun-style resort with all its condos and beachfront properties fronting wide, lightly trafficked boulevards.

Rizhou seems unsure of itself. It is a self-proclaimed City of Sports and often shows off its beaches and kite-flying opportunities on tv. Its printed and internet promotional material, however, laments the inadequacy of the port facilities to handle large container ships.

Then there is Qingdao (once spelled Tsingdao and home of the eponymous beer). However it happened, this city’s architecture escaped the Cultural Revolution’s destructive zeal and thus retains a wealth of early 20th century buildings and atmosphere, much of it German. Sea, sand, beer, and history combine to make this city one of China’s most touristed, and one of the few that doesn’t fence off the attractions and charge an entrance fee. The city holds a well-attended international beer festival in August, a regatta in summer, and will host some of the aquatic sports during the Olympics.

Back in Jinan again, I’ve got a class to teach and I think we’re as much interested in each other as in the course content. I am teaching a group of professors a type of hybrid seminar of advanced English as a Second Language and Canadian Studies. They’re all going to Canada for four months after the course and for all but one, this will be the first foray abroad.

After we get to know each other over a period of weeks, it seems we have the same questions for each other. I’m asked what foreigners want to see in China and I’m at a loss. I guess I expected to see temples and all things ancient, but as for what I wanted to see, I just don’t know. I reverse the question and ask what the students want to see in Canada. They don’t know either.

The sense of community is palpable in China. So much so that it is rare to be alone, even if you want to be. Going shopping or even just wandering around the city, you can’t really be alone, or be left alone. It’s comforting in some ways but intrusive in others. One always has a companion or group of companions to go out with, hang around with, and talk with. Even if one starts out alone, it’s hard to stay that way given the curiosity and cohesiveness of the local community.

On the other hand, especially for the independent soul, it is hard to move. At the supermarket there is a fleet of staff ready to show you all the many brands of toothpaste, open them and let you sniff them, even if you don’t want to. In the restaurants, with infinite patience, staff will wait tableside as you peruse the hundreds of dishes and make a decision. Etc.

The soul of China, I think is the family, and as China changes, there is an undercurrent of uncertainty disquieting the people. As the family has been reduced to one child, the elderly seem lonely, despite the throngs of people. Maybe it’s the intergenerational family structure, now weakening, that is responsible. The outward manifestation is a proliferation of pet dogs. I’m told that few people had pets until relatively recently. Now it seems that everyone does.

My final days in China are punctuated with lavish dinners to see off the profs heading to Canada, to thank me for teaching, and so forth. On the night before departure, my boss and her husband and another from the office take me to dinner. It’s a great time sampling interesting dishes and chatting. Afterward they ask if we should go for a foot massage… and that about sums up my impression of the new China… it’s predictable yet unexpected. I get a feeling of being in a small, 1950s town, yet there are 6 million people here.

As a market, it can sometimes feel like the complete opposite of the West. For example, chicken wing tips cost more per pound than breasts. Smoked duck breast or duck tongues? Fish heads or fish filets? At other times, China seems to be more creative and dynamic than the West, particularly in electronics. And yet again, China can still surprise by being so Western that it’s almost not Chinese. The British newscaster engaging in playful newsroom banter with the striking Chinese anchor who speaks flawless, unaccented English. The travelogue show hosted by an African-American twenty-something who tools around China in his SUV, speaking flawless Mandarin to the natives. A special on the new Qinghai-Tibet railroad narrated and hosted by a bubbly young woman who seems to be right off of a US college campus.

China looks different after six weeks living there. I never imagined it to be so hot and I never imagined it to be so many things at once, often contradicting itself in being Chinese but striving to be almost European in the arts and American in metropolitan architecture. It isn’t, as I had wrongly assumed, Chinatown on a grand scale. Instead, it seems more like a San Fernando Valley with Chinese signs… sprawling, almost without a center, ringed by a horizon of gray. Amid the sprawl, though, pockets of strange and familiar, often just a few blocks from each other.

I think, if planning to do business in China, no seminar or workshop can really prepare one for the reality. It’s a place that requires time and patience to understand, much less get a feeling for. China is also big in size, not just population. Harbin, an important provincial capital in the northeast, is six hours flying from Hong Kong in the southeast. East to west is even longer. Six weeks isn’t enough to even begin to comprehend such a vast expanse, so doing business is probably best via a joint venture, but even then, it can take some time to fully understand your business in a Chinese context, your mutual expectations, and your partners themselves.

On my way to Beijing for my flight home, I fly the provincial airline. I feel like I’ve got a bit of a better understanding of the country and the way it speaks to me. After the inflight meal, I unwrap the hygiene wet turban needless wash (moist towelette), clean my hands and pop in the après meal mint to dispel oral cavity peculiar smell and make social family relationship more excellent. It’s an ordinary flight. And an ordinary day in China.

Dr. Altanero’s brief bio: I’ve worked at Austin Community College (ACC) for 8 years, grew up in NJ, went to college at a hippy school in So Cal and came here for grad school and stayed... except for those few months when I was in China!

A modified version of this article first appeared in the February 2007 issue of Multilingual Computing.

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Fired up for a Chinese celebration

continued

At Chion Shokudo, the lingua franca is Mandarin, not just for the chefs and waiters, but the majority of customers too. Ditto with the flat-screen TVs affixed to every wall, all tuned to a satellite channel beamed from Beijing. Japanese is understood, of course, and the menu is bilingual (each dish helpfully assigned a number and small photo). But the language of the cuisine is 100 percent Sichuan.

In terms of flavors, nothing gets lost in translation here. Just about everything on the menu crackles with the pungent, searching flavors of garlic and ginger, chili and huajiao pepper. If you only know mabo-dofu (minced meat with tofu) and tantan-men (wheat noodles in spicy red soup) in the dumbed-down guises served at standard chuka restaurants, prepare to be awed at Chion Shokudo.

Your neighbors are likely to be tucking into platters covered with whole red chilies, literally obscuring from view the meat or fish underneath. Or dipping into stainless steel bowls filled to the brim with oily-red broth. Or chewing on piles of chicken feet — only the Japanese customers attempt to use chopsticks; those in the know just pick them up and gnaw.

You get the idea: there is nothing refined about Chion Shokudo. One of the house specialties is pork spines (ask for No. 220, buta no sebone shoyu-ni), which are simmered in a soy-flavored broth and doled up in 3-kg portions — though half-size servings are available for those with lesser appetites. There are more bones piled up on the tables here than you’ll see in the dinosaur section of the National Science Museum.

So where to start? There are plenty of appetizers, dishes such as banbanji (No. 4), cold cuts of cleavered chicken meat — unusually this is not on the bone and comes slathered with a thick sauce of considerable piquancy; chilled tofu served with pitan preserved egg; or simply stir-fried spinach (No. 107). All the farmhouse staples are here too. Spicy deep-fried tofu braised with vegetables and mushroom (jiachang-dofu, No. 111); stir-fried chicken with fried peanuts (gongbao jiding, No. 224); even that truck-stop standard, stir-fried tomato with scrambled egg (No. 108). Two or three of these plus soup and a heaping bowl of rice would constitute a square meal anywhere in the Middle Kingdom.

But at this time of year, there is no better way to raise the spirits and get into celebratory mode than Sichuan hotpot (ask for huoguo), and Chion Shokudo offers so many combinations of broth, ingredients and dipping sauces that it devotes a full page of its menu to the subject.

Our favorite option is always the two-color soup, served in a yin-yang shaped casserole, one side filled with white broth (a pork bone stock) seasoned with various medicinal herbs, the other a livid red soup packing heat aplenty. In Chinese, this broth is called mala (literally “numb and spicy”), since it is liberally spiked with tongue-numbing Sichuan peppercorns and palate-searing chilies.

After picking a dip — we like the thick, viscous sesame sauce (ma jiang) — you then select the ingredients to go into the pot. This being the Year of the Pig, the obvious choice is surely pork. But nothing works better in this kind of hotpot than mutton, here served in fine slices straight from the freezer, making it crisp and easy to pick up with your chopsticks, and then retrieve from the bubbling broth

Besides the various cuts of meat, including organ meats, there is also a large selection of seafood (also frozen), tofu and vegetables. Since portion sizes are substantial and the basic broth costs up to 1,500 yen, before you start ordering the meat and other ingredients, huo-guo hotpots are most economical when shared among groups of three or four, rather than couples.

But nothing is pricey here (by Tokyo standards, at any rate). As the mala broth takes its toll, generating sweat and palpitations and cauterizing the inner membranes of your digestive tract, you can happily slake your thirst on imported Tsingtao or Yinchang Beer for a remarkable 280 yen per bottle — cheaper than you’d pay in most liquor stores. Likewise with shochu highballs and the shaoxingjiu rice wine: you are unlikely to find better prices anywhere in the city.

Once you have finished eating, though, you are not expected to linger. You close your meal with tea, but there is no dessert to go with it. That’s because there are never enough tables at Chion Shokudo for those wanting to eat there. With food this intense, and at prices like these, you can understand why.

There’s no ducking good value here

It is quite possible to find authentic street-level Chinese cuisine without venturing so far off the map. You need look no further than Chinese Cafe Eight, which now boasts three branches.

The original restaurant, on TV Asahi-dori, was a smash hit from the day it opened a few years back. It played to full houses every night thanks to its pared-to-the-bone prices, especially for the Peking Duck, and its round-the-clock hours, perfect for hungry clubbers.

However, we were less keen on the stuffy, claustrophobic premises and harried, cheerless staff. So when an offshoot opened in Ebisu, we quickly transferred our affections. The ceilings are higher, the air and the view are better, and the floor staff appear more relaxed.

It offers the same selection of dim sum, including a range of suigyoza (“water Chinese meat dumplings” is their translation) for a remarkable 105 yen per three pieces. And the Peking Duck is still an amazing bargain at 3,680 yen for the whole bird, including dipping sauces and thin pancakes, a plate of stir-fried duck meat, and a light soup.

A couple of weeks back a third branch opened in a rather airless Akasaka-Mitsuka basement. But who’s complaining with duck that tastes this good?

• Chinese Cafe Eight: Court Annex Roppongi 2F, 3-2-13 Nishi-Azabu, Minato-ku; tel: (03) 5414-5708; www.cceight.com;
• ABC Mamies Bldg. 3F, 1-16-12 Ebisu-Minami, Shibuya-ku; tel: (03) 3713-2858; www.8-duck.jp;
• Akasaka Floral Plaza Bldg. B1F, 3-8-8 Akasaka, Minato-ku; tel: (03) 6234-9788; www.akasaka8.jp/
• Chion Shokudo Miyakawa Bldg. B1F, 1-24-1 Ikebukuro, Toshima-ku tel: (03) 5951-8288 http://www.zhiyinjp.com/web/zy_shitang.asp

This article was originally posted here.

Reprinted with permission from The Japan Times (C) All rights reserved

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Ten things you didn't know about China

continued

Chinese citizens are among the fastest growing groups of tourists to destinations outside of their own country.
Chinese citizens were only freed by their government to travel for leisure in 1997, but by 2004, 29 million mainland Chinese citizens traveled abroad. Some reports estimate that Chinese tourists will number 115 million by 2020.

www.worldhum.com

China has the most rapidly growing thirst for “foreign” oil.
With 1.3 billion people, the People’s Republic of China is the world’s most populous country and the second largest oil consumer. A report by the International Energy Agency predicted that by 2030, Chinese oil imports will equal imports by the U.S. today. When world energy leaders gathered in Houston last week to dissect industry issues, their remarks were translated from English into only two other languages — Russian and Chinese.

www.iags.org | www.chinapost.com

Of the 20,000 new English words unofficially logged last year, up to 20 percent were “Chinglish. ”
Chinglish terms include “drinktea,” meaning closed, from the Mandarin Chinese for resting; and its opposite, “torunbusiness,” meaning open, from the Mandarin word for operating.  An older example we all recognize: “Long time no see," a word-for-word Chinese-English translation, is now a standard English phrase.

A Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, or KFC opens at the rate of a store a day in China.

Yum Brands, the world’s largest fast-food operator in terms of number of locations, is opening up one restaurant a day in China, with plans to add 400 restaurants this year.

www.chicagotribune.com

129 surnames represent 87 percent of all surnames in China.

This statistic was compiled as part of the reviving of an order of the Emperor many years ago to compile the 100 most popular surnames (or last, or family names) in China at the time. School children used to memorize them.

english.people.com. | www.chinapage.com

* All links found in this article are meant to be points of departure, and for further informational purposes. If you have information that is different or even contradictory to these factoids, please tell us, and we will print it in next month’s E-Buzz.

Tips for preparing your files for optimal translation.

Doing business in China: protecting your intellectual property rights

continued

China’s computer software protection does not extend to the ideas, processing, operating methods, mathematical concepts or the like used in software development. Computer software copyright comes to existence as soon as its development has been completed.

To protect its business secrets in China, a U.S. company should implement affirmative measures to keep the trade secrets by ensuring that the business secret is not published, but kept secret. Such affirmative measures include: (1) maintaining and marking documents as “confidential” and “trade secret”; (2) limiting or restricting access to trade secret subject matter; and (3) executing confidential agreements or non-disclosure agreements with employees and business partners.

For the purpose of protecting intellectual property rights in China, it is suggested that U.S. companies do the following: (1) register their trademarks, patents, and copyrights quickly and as appropriate with the assistance of legal counsel and local Chinese intellectual property agencies licensed by the Chinese government; (2) obtain proper employment contracts to protect inventions and trade secrets; (3) establish and keep good relationships with major administrative authorities; (4) promptly report intellectual property right infringements to the administrative authorities and actively collaborate with those authorities in their investigations; (5) if necessary, file a law suit before the court and ask for preliminary injunction against infringement from the court, or file a complaint with an administrative authority with a request for relief through Chinese prosecutors for criminal action.

Read Jian Hang’s bio here.

Excerpted from an article originally published in The Bullet"iln” on the International Lawyers Network Web Site. Reprinted with permission from the author and iln.com.

A copy of the original article can be found here:

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