The trials of translation of Haruki Murakami’s work

Follow this link to the Asahi Shimbun site to read all about the importance of having a strong team of translators in literary translation, particularly if said translation is for best-selling Japanese author Haruki Murakami!

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/cool_japan/culture/AJ201305150070

Sourced from The Asahi Shimbun

…………………………………………………………………………………….

With over twenty years experience in translation and interpreting services, TJC Global has established a large and diverse network of translators and interpreters. This allows us to selectively source highly skilled personnel with backgrounds or qualifications in a relevant specialist field. We can therefore provide a tailored service, with accuracy and precision

We can offer translation and interpreting services at any time of the year, in many locations: London, England, UK (Scotland, Ireland, Wales), Europe, USA, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and other global locations. Please contact us for more information. For Japanese interpreting and translation services, please visit our sister site.

Members of: ATC, ITI, Proz

See our LinkedIn profile or visit us on Twitter

Mind controlled prosthetics aim to make wheelchairs obsolete

“We want to galvanize people’s imaginations,” said Miguel Nicolelis, the Brazilian neuroscientist at Duke University who is leading the Walk Again Project’s efforts to create a robotic suit that could one day ‘make wheelchairs obsolete’.

Mind-controlled leg armor may sound like science fiction. But after decades of testing on rats and monkeys, neuro prosthetics are finally beginning to show promise for people. Devices plugged directly into the brain seem capable of restoring some self-reliance to stroke victims, car crash survivors, injured soldiers and others hampered by incapacitated or missing limbs.

Nicolelis is a pioneer in the field. In the 1990s, he helped build the first mind-controlled arm. Rats learned they could manipulate the device to get a drink of water simply by thinking about doing so.

Researchers studied the signals as the rats pushed a lever to guide the arm that gave them water, and they saw groups of neurons firing at different rates as the rats moved the lever in different directions. An algorithm was developed to decipher the patterns, discern the animal’s intention at any given moment and send commands from the brain directly to the arm instead of to the lever. Eventually, rats could move the arm without pushing the lever at all.

Using similar brain-machine interfaces, Nicolelis and his team learned to translate the neural signals in primate brains. In 2000, they reported that an owl monkey connected to the Internet had controlled an arm located 1,000 km away. Eight years later, the team described a rhesus monkey that was able to dictate the pace of a robot jogging on a treadmill half a world away in Japan.

Small groups of neurons, it seemed, were surprisingly capable of communicating with digital devices. Individual cells learn to communicate with computer algorithms more effectively over time by changing their firing patterns, as revealed in a study of a mouse’s brain published last year in Nature. “You can count on this plasticity when designing a prosthetic,” said Jose Carmena, a neuroscientist at the University of California at Berkeley. “You can count on the brain to learn.”

Capitalizing on that adaptability, several human quadriplegics have received implanted brain chips in FDA-approved clinical trials. In a widely publicized demonstration of that system, a 58-year-old woman paralyzed by a stroke sipped a cup of coffee last year using a five-fingered robotic arm, not attached to her body. Despite the slickness of the presentation, however, the woman actually had little control over the aesthetically pleasing arm. Her thoughts triggered preset choreography. “What she was controlling was really simplistic, really rudimentary,” said Andrew Schwartz, a neuroscientist at the University of Pittsburgh.

His team’s robotic arm offers much more freedom, as well as greater agility and speed. Funded in part by the U.S. military and built at the university, the freestanding mechanical limb sports a wrist that bends and rotates.  Jan Scheuermann, a 53-year-old with a rare degenerative disorder, named the arm “Hector” and learned in a single day to move it around like a claw in an arcade game. After 13 weeks of training, she mastered the fine control needed to grasp objects and stack cones. Fulfilling a long-standing goal, she fed herself a chocolate bar — and followed it with some string cheese and a red pepper.

To achieve this dexterity, Schwartz’s team had implanted two chips in Scheuermann’s brain instead of the usual one. The duo monitored about 200 neurons at once, more than ever before. More neurons communicate more information, helping to clarify the brain’s desires.

But even hundreds of cells may not be enough to allow someone to control two mechanical limbs at once — a device that scientists hope to showcase at the upcoming World Cup. “You really need to reach thousands of neurons,” said Nicolelis. That is why his team is developing a new kind of electrode that branches like a tree, covering a larger volume of the brain. Made of a flexible plastic that conducts electricity, the electrode can monitor nearly 2,000 brain cells in a mouse.

Nicolelis’s dream is for the very first kick of the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Sao Paulo next June to be delivered by a Brazilian teenager who is paralyzed from the waist down. If all goes according to plan, the teenager will walk onto the field, cock back a foot and swing at the soccer ball using a mechanical exoskeleton controlled by the teen’s brain.

Motorized metal braces will support and bend the kicker’s legs. The braces will be stabilized by gyroscopes and powered by a battery carried by the kicker in a backpack. German-made sensors will relay a feeling of pressure when each foot touches the ground. And months of training on a virtual-reality simulator will have prepared the teenager to do all this using a device that translates his or her thoughts into actions.

The blueprints for next summer’s soccer exoskeleton also include sensors that will provide an artificial skin for its human wearer. With the world watching, Nicolelis hopes not only that his bionic teenager will be able to feel the ball but also that disabled people everywhere will feel a sense of hope.

Source: The Washington Post

…………………………………………………………………….

TJC can provide professional translation and interpretation services and have specialists working in a range of areas including medical conferences, pharmaceutics, and other medical fields. Indeed, our level of specialism coupled with excellent customer service accounts for our ever-expanding list of clients from around the world. For further information about what we can offer your organisation, please visit our website or contact us. You can also visit our sister site for professional Japanese translation and interpretation services.

If you require an interpreter for a Medical Conference, please see our Medical Conference Interpreter page

Members of: ATC, ITI, Proz

See our LinkedIn profile or visit us on Twitter

The Importance of Translation in Clinical Trials

Over 25 years of experience have taught TJC Global, a translation company situated in the heart of Oxford, that the importance of translation in clinical trials is often overlooked. This article briefly summarizes the need for accurate, lucid and reliable clinical trial documents at every step in the research and development of a new drug, and explores the role translation has in ensuring that this is preserved.

The Requirements of Clinical Trial Documents

The preparation of original PRO (patient reported outcome), ICF (informed consent form) and other clinical trial questionnaires, forms and documents is universally acknowledged to be a meticulous process, a process in which mistakes simply cannot be tolerated – inaccurate or poorly worded documents jeopardise the informed consent and well-being of those individuals taking part in the trials, and more fundamentally have the potential to invalidate the results of the trial itself.

Aside from these obvious implications, the research data gathered by clinical trials must be scrutinized by an independent authority; any miscommunication incurred by the original trial documents is liable to render that part of the research data unusable.

Financial Implications

If we briefly consider the implications that this has for the profit margins of the companies undertaking such research, the importance of faithful translation of precisely written documents at every stage of the research phase becomes yet more startlingly obvious: put succinctly, if a portion of research data becomes unusable, a delay will almost certainly ensue.

Of course, delays erode profit margins in any business; within pharmaceutical businesses, however, their effects are magnified. Figures such as the $820 billion forecast for pharmaceutical sales in 2009 belie the sensitivity and exposure to loss that afflict those undertaking original research and development of products: estimations for the cost of developing an innovative, approved drug vary wildly and are likely to have increased considerably in recent years, but they are frequently in excess of $1 billion.

The 20 year patent protection period is another figure which masks the true size of the margins involved: typically, a company will be left with less than 10 years in which to earn back the research and development costs before the market is available for generic knock-offs to exploit.  Accepting 8 years as a representative time-frame in which the approximated $1 billion costs may be recouped, and allowing for the drug to do nothing more than break even, the true cost of the delays encountered incurred in the trial is sobering – every day the trial is delayed incurs a loss of revenue in excess of $342,000.

Problems of Translation and the Role of the Translator

These social, scientific and economic considerations underpin the process by which original clinical trial questionnaires, forms and documents are created; they account for the unique degree of precision that is required.

The need for this precision to be preserved in the translation of these documents is implicitly recognised and addressed by the stringent guidelines that accompany the process of translation – for example, organisations from Rotterdam (EuroQol) to Boston (IQOLA) publish guidelines governing the translation of trial questionnaires. This process typically involves a team of translators, working independently, who are then individually and collectively evaluated before a ‘reconciled’ translation is produced. The subsequent multiple, independent back-translation of this provides a means of comparing the translation with the original; it provides an indication of the level of dynamic equivalence between the two.

With an increase in the number of clinical trials taking place in EECs, Asia, Latin America and Africa, the role of translation has never been so crucial, and the challenges have never been so prominent. Yet, translation is not a word for word exchange, striving to keep notions of formal equivalence or faithfulness; rather, it is a complex and varied process of adaptation, always aiming for this dynamic equivalence.

This dynamic equivalence ensures that the new text bears the meaning conveyed in the original language, whilst retaining the syntactical, grammatical and idiomatic qualities of the new language. Etymologically, the Latin root for translation, ‘a transporting’ or ‘bringing across’ of information further illustrates the redundancy of the ignorant view that translation is merely an equational, mathematical process.

Cultural sensitivity, for example, becomes key when we consider that the idea of willing consent is primary to the ethical obligations of a trial, as stated in the Nuremberg Code and the Declaration of Helsinki: in some cultures it is customary for male members of the family or community leaders to take decisions on behalf of women, children or other community members.

This poses multiple problems to the notion of informed consent which must be addressed – participants must not only be aware of all potential risks or adverse effects, but also that they are able to withdraw at any point during the trial. The wording of the form must be culturally sensitive; even the fact that a written form must be used at all becomes problematic in cultures with low literacy levels, where it may be more appropriate for witnessed, verbal consent to be used instead.

There might be additional problems in the complexity and technicality of the wording which need to be addressed before the subjects can be fully aware of the purpose and processes of the trial – for example, many languages simply do not have corresponding words for terms such as ‘placebo’, and the very concept of a ‘placebo’ does not exist in some cultures. Ultimately, it is the responsibility of the translator to ensure that the subject has fully comprehended the document.

However, the role of the translator is not restricted to the reception of trial documents: it is equally as vital that subjects are able to communicate any issues, especially those which may act as contradictions for the drug being tested, to those running the trial. Patients will not have full knowledge of technical medical terminology; only accurate translations, borne out of a familiarity with the idioms of a culture and its language, can avoid potentially harmful and dangerous consequences, maintaining the requisite efficiency and effectiveness of the trial.

The extraordinary demands placed upon any trial document, and the need for these demands to be met in multiple media and languages, emphasises the necessity of finding skilled and experienced native speakers. Only then can a translation be produced which reliably withstands the cultural, linguistic and technical demands placed upon a document by those who will use it, from trial subject to chief executive of the medical research council.

The Solution

Time-consuming mistakes and misunderstandings in translation are simply not an option. This is where companies such as TJC Global come in: with a wide and experienced team of specialist translators and interpreters, we offer a service which, without exception, meets the dual requirements of accuracy and efficiency as stipulated by our clients.

Our situation in the heart of Oxford, one of the country’s chief seats of learning and research, is critical to the service that we offer: it has allowed us to build an extensive network of links with pharmaceutical and biomedical companies; it places us directly alongside, among others, important research centres such as the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, the Medawar Building for Pathogen Research, the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, the Nuffield Department of Medicine (containing the Clinical Trials Service Unit and Epidemiological Studies Unit, two world renowned research units), and the John Radcliffe Hospital.

There is increasing recognition that it is no longer practical for manufacturers to undertake their own clinical trials; the objective and impartial role of an academic group – such as those based in Oxford, close to TJC Global – is invaluable to pharmaceutical companies in ensuring the credibility of the trials and the negotiation of stringent regulatory conditions. Translation is often the last step in this process, and yet is seldom given the consideration that it requires.

As experienced translators of all the vital documents in a clinical trials – from CRFs, ICFs and PROs to information leaflets for trial subjects –  as well as papers publishing trial results and patents and marketing materials associated with the release of a drug, TJC Global frequently employs specialist translators with expertise in relevant pharmaceutical fields. All of our translators are native speakers of the target language who fully understand and are able to create the dynamic equivalence so critical to the ‘bringing across’ of meaning from an original document into one for reception in either the developing or developed worlds.

Our experience and location have afforded us an excellent understanding of the demands placed upon a translation in the field of clinical research and development, and the services that we offer reflect this at every step. The implications of an inaccurate or inefficient translation are too serious to ignore.

…………………………………………………………………………………

Members of: ATC, ITI, Proz

See our LinkedIn profile or visit us on Twitter

Arbitration Interpreters Worldwide

Arbitration is a type of dispute resolution which occurs outside the courts. The process of arbitration may be quicker than for litigation, and can sometimes offer greater flexibility and lower costs for businesses. Hearings will normally last about half a day, although the arbitrator has the power to adjourn if necessary.

In this legal setting the dispute is referred to ‘arbitrators’ (or the ‘arbitral tribunal’), the third party who make a legally binding decision for both sides. Upon consideration of the evidence, the arbitrator makes a legally binding decision which can be enforced in the same manner as a civil court judgment.

It is the role of this impartial third party that is important in distinguishing arbitration  from another similar legal process: mediation. In arbitration  the third party is completely responsible for issuing a final resolution to the matter at hand, whereas during mediation, the mediator works with the third party to help them reach a decision amongst themselves.

In other words, a mediator has no power of judgement but facilitates communication between parties in order to resolve the dispute without legal involvement and amicably. Mediation is therefore particularly useful when two parties have a long-term relationship to maintain, as it is above all a method of conciliation, whereas arbitration  does not necessarily concentrate on the preservation of inter-party relations.

Arbitration can be either voluntary or mandatory. However, even mandatory arbitration is voluntary to begin with as it can only come from a statute or from a contract that is voluntarily entered into, where the parties agree to hold all existing or future disputes to arbitration.

The settlement technique of arbitration is often employed in commercial disputes, especially those which are international in nature, as with the shipping industry.

Teams of  legal interpreters often specialize in particular fields – including shipping disputes and technical engineering – and are accustomed to interpreting in a vast range of legal settings including litigation, depositions, as well as arbitration.

…………………………………………………………………………….

For a free quick quote for an arbitration interpreter, please contact us by email or for further information please see our website.

Members of: ATC, ITI, Proz

See our LinkedIn profile or visit us on Twitter

Court Interpreting: A brief introduction

What are the qualities of a court interpreter?

The role of a court interpreter in a court case is hugely important. This is why many professional court interpreters take a test to become recognised as a Court Certified Interpreter. They enable their client to speak and answer the court’s questions but at the same time represent them to the rest of the people present in the court room. The interpreted testimony of a witness to is often a deciding factor in a trial and can consequently dictate its outcome. There are therefore three essential qualities that any court interpreter must have; accuracy, impartiality and experience.

1. 1. Accuracy: the interpreter must interpret the words of his client as closely as possible, being careful to not omit off-hand comments or parts of the testimony itself. Additionally, the interpreter must convey the tone and register of his client as such features of speech are often used to evaluate the character of the person speaking.
2. Impartiality: the role of a court interpreter is not the same as a lawyer and therefore they do not have the right to defend or advise the client in any way. In order to ensure this is the case, everything that is said by both the interpreter and client is noted in a transcript that can be examined later if necessary.
3. Experience: court interpreting does not only require high levels of fluency and articulation in both languages but also experience in the legal field and the individual subject matter of each case. With his/her experience, the interpreter can therefore clarify  technical vocabulary that may impede the client’s understanding of the matter at hand and also interpret any specialised vocabulary used by their client to the other members of the court.

How does court interpretation work?

There are two ways in which a court interpreter may work, either via consecutive interpreting (which is used most commonly) or simultaneous interpreting (which is used in a significantly small amount if cases). Consecutive interpreting involves interpreting a complete thought expressed by the speaker, whereas simultaneous interpreting runs along-side the original speech and is often transmitted to the listeners via headphones. Especially in the case of simultaneous interpreting, the work load is shared by a team of interpreters, owing to the demanding and intense nature of their work. In many high-profile cases, a check interpreter may also be used, to aid and verify the work of the main interpreter.

Different types of court

During their career a court interpreter will work in a number of different courts. The function of each of these courts is different as they deal with cases that involve both civil and criminal law, and are of varying levels of gravity.

The County Court: this can also be called the Small Claims Court and usually deals with civil cases such as breach of contract or personal injury.

The Magistrates Court: this is where the vast majority of criminal cases are heard and resolved.

The Crown Court: cases that are seen as too serious for the Magistrates courts are sent here and are tried in front of a jury.

The High Court of Justice: this is based at the Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand in London and is where the most high-profile criminal cases are heard.

The state of the UK courts following a five-year contract for court interpreters between the Ministry of Justice and ALS has been a hot media topic of late. Many stories have circulated about the less than orthodox proceedings, from the wife of a non-English speaking defendant who was called in to interpret the proceedings for her husband to the Ipswich Magistrates’ Court Judge who resorted to instructing the defendant in court to use the notorious Google Translate to communicate. In other stories, some interpreters arriving in court have never been in a court room before and are not even sure of the correct dress code.

In the midst of the outcry following these sorts of happenings, it is worth asking; what does providing high-quality court interpreting actually involve?

The question of the importance of high quality interpreting is certainly not a new concept. Virtually all European countries now guarantee the right to an interpreter for defendants who do not speak the language of the proceedings. Indeed, the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, adopted by the Council of Europe in 1950, guarantees in Article 6, among other things, 1) that the defendant be present in person when the case is heard in court, 2) that the evidence be heard by an “impartial tribunal,” and 3) that the defendant be informed of the charges “in a language which he understands” and to “have the free assistance of an interpreter if he cannot understand or speak the language used in the court”.

However accuracy in court interpreting is not reached by linguistic fluency alone. Of course this is essential, but it is a necessary, and not a sufficient element of what makes an excellent court interpreter. What is also extremely important is a high level of knowledge of legal terminology in both working languages. If an interpreter does not understand legal terminology and procedures they will be unable to pass along what is being asked, to translate legal assumptions to languages that might not natively hold them, and to communicate the requirements and consequences of the situations in which their clients find themselves.  What is more, not only must a court interpreter be able to do all of this with speech, they need to be able to translate legal documents and pieces of evidence, verbatim, by sight.

The role of the court interpreter is a difficult, demanding and complex one which requires talented, highly-disciplined and well-trained professionals. It is easy to overlook the nuances and highly-specialised skills demanded by this profession; far from speaking only two languages the court interpreter must also ‘speak’ the legal jargon of the case and the many linguistic characteristics of his or her defendant.

………………………………………………………………………..

At TJC Global we have professional, experienced court interpreters working in a very large range of languages. They understand the court system inside out, and many even have a background working in the legal system as barristers amongst other occupations, or studying Law. For more information about our court interpreting or other interpreting services, or for a free quote, please visit our website or send us an email.

If you are specifically looking for a Japanese <> English court interpreter, please visit our sister site The Japanese Connection or send us an email.

Members of: ATC, ITI, Proz

See our LinkedIn profile or visit us on Twitter

$45 million international cyber theft rocks banking world

A global cyber crime syndicate’s recent bank heist has demonstrated how serious the threat of cyber crime is to banks around the world. It also shows how increasingly international and sophisticated criminal gangs have become, particularly those using the Internet.

U.S. prosecutors reported on Thursday that a global cyber crime ring stole $45 million from two Middle Eastern banks by hacking into credit card processing firms and withdrawing money from ATM’s in 27 countries.

Cyber experts said they believe the operation likely required the cooperation of several hundred people, at least several of whom were highly skilled hackers capable of devising ways to penetrate well-protected financial systems.

The group may have targeted Middle Eastern banks because they tend to allow customers to put much larger sums on cards and do not monitor them as closely as banks in other regions, said Shane Shook, global vice president of consulting for the security firm Cylance Inc.

“It’s a target-rich environment in terms of soft electronic security,” said Shook, an Arabic speaker who has spent more than a decade investigating cyber crimes.

The U.S. Justice Department accused eight men of allegedly forming the New York-based cell of the organization, and said seven of them have been arrested. The eighth, allegedly a leader of the cell, was reported to have been murdered in the Dominican Republic on April 27.

The ringleaders are believed to be outside the United States but prosecutors declined to give details, citing the ongoing investigation. What’s clear is the sheer scope and speed of the crimes: in one of the attacks, in just over 10 hours, $40 million was raided from ATM‘s in 24 countries involving 36,000 transactions.

“In the place of guns and masks, this cyber crime organization used laptops and the Internet,” U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Loretta Lynch said at a news conference. “Moving as swiftly as data over the Internet, the organization worked its way from the computer systems of international corporations to the streets of New York City.”

Prosecutors highlighted the “surgical precision” of these hackers, the global nature of their organization, and the speed and coordination with which they executed operations in 27 countries.

The gang broke into the computers of two credit card processors, one in India in December 2012 and the other in the United States this February.

The hackers increased the available balance and withdrawal limits on prepaid MasterCard debit cards issued by Bank of Muscat of Oman, and National Bank of Ras Al Khaimah PSC (RAKBANK) of the United Arab Emirates, according to the complaint. They then distributed counterfeit debit cards to “cashers” around the world, enabling them to siphon millions of dollars from ATMs in a matter of hours.

In New York, for example, members of the cell fanned out into the city on the afternoon of February 19, armed with cards bearing a single Bank of Muscat account number. Ten hours later, they had completed 2,904 withdrawals for $2.4 million in all, the final transaction coming around 1:26 a.m., prosecutors said.

Casher crews in other countries were busy doing the same, pulling some $40 million from Bank of Muscat to add to the $5 million they stole from RAKBANK in December, according to the indictment. In total, cashers made some 40,500 withdrawals in 27 countries during the two coordinated incidents.

It is not clear if banks can seek to recover losses from card processors, legal experts said. Contracts usually have specific language governing the security protocols that must be in place, said Frederick Rivera, an attorney with Perkins Cole who specializes in financial services litigation.

Lynch said the New York gang kept roughly 20 percent of their takes, and sent the rest to the organizers. Authorities said they seized hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and bank accounts, as well as two Rolex watches and a Mercedes SUV, from the defendants.

Investigators said that they found an email exchange with an account associated with a criminal money laundering operation in St. Petersburg, Russia, describing wire transfers.

An investigation is ongoing to see if other cells are operating in the country, Lynch said, adding that U.S. law enforcement had worked with counterparts in Japan, Canada, Germany, Romania, the United Arab Emirates, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Italy, Spain, Belgium, France, United Kingdom, Latvia, Estonia, Thailand, and Malaysia to uncover the ring.

Sourced from Reuters

……………………………………………………………………….

With over twenty five years’ of financial experience, TJC Global can deliver the financial Translation you require. With our diverse network of linguists, we can provide a financial Translator with years of experience in your required field and fluency in your target language. Financial services are a vital part of both the global economy and the economies of individual countries. Traders, buyers, and sellers communicate with colleagues across the globe, and it is vital that such communication is free-flowing and that information shared is accurate and unambiguous; TJC’s experts can assist you in that area.

If you require assistance in Financial Conferences, please see our conference page.

Members of: ATC, ITI, Proz

See our LinkedIn profile or visit us on Twitter

Chinese ‘e-tail’ revolution

Online shopping, almost nonexistent in China as recently as five years ago, has emerged as a major sales channel for retailers, with combined sales of about 1.3 trillion renminbi, or $211 billion, last year, said Carrie Yu, China and Asia Pacific retail and consumer expert at PwC in Hong Kong.

The findings, which are based on a survey of more than 11,000 online shoppers in 11 countries, underline the speed at which China has emerged as one of the world’s most wired retail markets.

In China, 58 percent of respondents in the PwC report said they shopped online at least once a week, for example. That percentage was by far the highest of any of the countries covered in the PwC survey. By comparison, only 42 percent of U.S. respondents, 41 percent of those in Britain, and 29 percent of German respondents said they shopped online at least once a week. The percentage was lowest in France, where only 13 percent said they made online purchases once or more a week.

China now has the world’s largest online population with over 130 million domestic broadband users. Chinese consumers shop online, using gadgets like smartphones and tablets, more frequently than their counterparts elsewhere. One possible reason for the boom in online purchases is that the infrastructure outside the major cities is still developing and access to traditional retail shopping is still limited for many Chinese consumers. Online shopping allows consumers access to all the goods they cannot purchase locally.

“Things are happening very fast here,” Ms. Yu said. “E-tailing has become a major focus for C.E.O.’s across all segments of retailing, whether it’s electrical goods, luxury goods or even groceries.”

The explosive growth of electronic shopping in China has led to the country’s emergence as one of the world’s busiest online shopping markets, both in terms of overall sales volumes and in terms of the frequency with which consumers shop online, Ms. Yu said.

Chinese consumers are also significantly more likely than their counterparts in other parts of the world to use smartphones or tablets, rather than PCs, to make online purchases. More than one third of Chinese online shoppers used such devices, about double the global average, the PwC report found.

The quest for lower prices has been a main driver of online shopping around the world in recent years, especially in the half-decade since the global financial crisis, when consumers in many parts of the world became more eager to save money, Ms. Yu said.

In China, however, the growth of online shopping has been given several extra kicks.The economy has continued to grow rapidly; wages have risen; and the country’s online population has ballooned along with better communications networks and the easy availability of online devices.

“In a nation where many other sectors are rapidly expanding, e-tailing stands out for its astonishing growth,” McKinsey wrote in a report published in March.

According to McKinsey, China was the world’s second-largest e-tailing market, after the United States, in 2011, with sales totaling $120 billion — well above the $107 billion in Japan, and more than twice those recorded in Britain, for example. By 2012, China came “very close to equaling the United States for the top spot” in terms of e-tailing volumes, McKinsey added.

With China‘s broadband penetration still at only 30%, and Chinese online sales projected to reach an annual $650 billion dollars by 2020, the future of e-tailing in China looks rosy for the considerable future.

Sources include: The New York Times, The McKinsey Global Institute

…………………………………………………………………………….

Within the consumer sector in a foreign country, it is vital to have a good understanding of the culture to ensure that marketing is tweaked to have maximum effect. TJC Global’s translators and interpreters can offer cross-cultural solutions that allow you to quickly grasp the important cultural aspects of a new country. Our translators and interpreters can also assist with the business side, attending meetings, translating correspondence, or even offering specialist financial or legal linguistic aid. Whatever your language needs, TJC Global will endeavour to fulfil them.

Members of: ATC, ITI, Proz

See our LinkedIn profile or visit us on Twitter