I’m currently working on localizing my website for the Chinese market, and I’m facing a question regarding language options. Specifically, I want to include Mandarin as one of the language choices, but I’m not sure which localization option would typically encompass Mandarin.
Could anyone with experience in website localization for China share some insights? I want to ensure that Mandarin speakers can comfortably navigate and engage with the content on my site.
Localization Options:
Chinese
Chinese (Hong Kong)
Chinese (RPC)
Chinese (Singapore)
Chinese (Taiwan)
Any advice on the best practices or specific localization options that include Mandarin would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance for your help!
For written language, you generally decide between “simplified” and “traditional”.
I generally use the Chinese setting for simplified Chinese ( mainland China & Singapore ), and the Chinese (Taiwan) setting for traditional Chinese ( Taiwan, Hong Kong & Macau ).
The reason is that Webflow is currently using Amazon Translate and Amazon’s docs indicate two language codes for Chinese;
Webflow does not show these codes in the list, but once you select a locale, you’ll see the code appear in your locales page, and you can confirm that you have the right one for Amazon’s machine translate features.
ADDED: I see this question a lot so I’ve added a video here.
You should go with Chinese Simplified which is the first option. Do take note that their translation from English to Chinese is pretty strong (in a bad way).
They will translate anything on the page including company’s name etc. so do request your client to vet through the content before you publish it.
