Gained in Translation: Communicating American Corporate Vision to Chinese Companies and Officials

 

A Silk Road Advisors (SRA) client receiving a gift from the Vice Mayor of Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province during a banquet arranged by SRA.

 

The President of a division of a large American manufacturer was frustrated with his most recent visit to China. The Chinese audience of company managers greeted his Powerpoint presentation with blank stares. They asked no questions about his company or his company’s product line, and offered no remarks that encouraged further discussion. The President left the Chinese company dispirited, empty-handed. Unfortunately, he met with the same reception two more times during the same trip: potential suppliers and Joint Venture partners were mute at the end of the President’s presentation.

 

The President had some inkling that part of the difficulty of engaging his Chinese audiences was that the Powerpoint presentation they used was in English language. So, though the President used a Chinese to translate his words and the Powerpoint display to Chinese language, the audience still felt remote from the message the President was attempting to relay.

 

Immediately upon return to the United States the President enlisted Silk Road Advisors (SRA) to help him more effectively engage Chinese audiences. Jointly, the company’s Creative Services Department and SRA developed a multiple-path approach to facilitating a rapport between the President’s presentations and his Chinese audiences:

 

• translation into Chinese language of a full-size, twenty page company brochure;

• development of a video exclusively for Chinese audiences;

• translation into Chinese language and re-arrangement of the company’s Powerpoint presentation;

 

The company had invested a great deal of time and money into the brochure: it was big, glossy, and loaded with color photos of the people, machines, processes and test procedures behind the production of their products. In China, they would hand the brochure – which they also called their “Credentials” – to Chinese managers and explain through a Chinese interpreter the meaning of the photos. SRA explained to the Company that Chinese perceive a lack of effort to translate materials for their understanding to show the Company really doesn’t care about Chinese people. It was important, then, for the President to have a Chinese-version of the glossy material to take with him his next trip to China.

 

SRA put together a team of Chinese translators for the Credentials project that, combined, had marketing and engineering experience. It was important that the translation be perfectly pitched to Chinese managers, government officials AND engineers who reviewed the brochure. Translation of the highly-specific technical jargon from English to Chinese was especially important – and difficult. Many of the engineering terms were known only to a very small group of Chinese engineers and academics, because many of the concepts were considered leading-edge in the West: the processes had not yet percolated to Chinese manufacturing practices.

 

SRA also reviewed a copy on DVD of the Company’s corporate video. It was boring. Even for Americans. Chinese would unabashedly sleep during the 11-minute technical dissertation, SRA explained to the client. The Company gave SRA the freedom to completely re-write the script of the video specifically for Chinese audiences. The Company’s Creative Services department would re-shoot any footage necessary to make the video work for Chinese viewers.

 

An SRA staff member who was practiced in oratory provided the Chinese-language narration. All pictures of parts and machines and manufacturing processes shown throughout the video had Chinese language captions. The Creative Services department convinced the President of the division to deliver a taped, personal greeting to Chinese managers and officials: SRA captioned the delivery with Chinese captions.

 

Finally, SRA went through the Company Powerpoint presentation slide-by-slide and suggested what frames should remain in the presentation and what should be taken out, as well as an arrangement of slides that would make sense to Chinese audiences. SRA translated all slides to Chinese characters after developing an English “script” for speakers to follow. So, the presenter could speak to each slide in English language, while the Chinese audience could relax with slides that were in their own language explained to them by a Chinese interpreter.

 

Company representatives that traveled to China and presented the materials to Chinese audiences consistently met with warm, engaged receptions. Scores of Chinese managers and government officials who were quite vocal about the degree to which the Company clearly cared about China, Chinese people and entering the China market. One government official even declared it should have SRA develop a video for its Economic Development Zone. The re-made materials eased introductions between the American and Chinese groups immeasurably, and encouraged discussion on how the groups might be able to cooperate.

 

It wasn’t enough to Chinese audiences that the American company was pre-eminent in its domestic market. The company had no presence in China, and showed before the transformation of its presentation it had little to offer Chinese. The tailored materials gave Chinese the basis to develop a level of trust in the American Company that would help the Company make a name for itself in the most populace marketplace in the world: China.

 

For more information about this or any other SRA case, or to contact SRA, email us at: contactus@silkr.com .