Professional Chinese Translation Services

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English to Chinese Translation – Fast, Affordable and Professional


Lionbridge provides high-quality Chinese translation services at affordable rates. Thousands of companies—big and small—trust Lionbridge to fuel their global growth.

Working with Lionbridge gives you immediate access to years of translation and localization experience, plus the expertise to work with your existing technology within your ecosystem. Translate from English to traditional or simplified Chinese quickly and at scale. Our team helps you plan and manage projects of any size, in a way which is scalable and affordable.

Our Chinese Translation Customers


English to Chinese Translation

Despite being two of the world’s most commonly spoken languages, English and Chinese are extremely dissimilar, with each containing its own linguistic subtleties and complexities. The Chinese language is highly contextual, so any professional Chinese translator must fully understand the intended purpose of a sentence and the language’s intricacies to avoid misunderstandings.

With seven distinct Chinese dialects and many more local dialects—which are often not mutually intelligible—the intended audience of a piece of translated writing must also be carefully considered. A piece of writing that works for one section of the population may not work for another, meaning only translators with a firm grasp of regional differences can be trusted to create work that produces the intended effect. As a language rich in its own idioms and intricacies, Chinese translators must also be equally confident in their grasp of the English language to avoid any loss of meaning in their translations.

Chinese Translation Services

Lionbridge is a leading provider of English to Chinese translation services. With thousands of professional English to Chinese translators located worldwide, no other translation company can provide fast and high-quality Chinese business translation at a more competitive rate. We currently deliver hundreds of Chinese translation projects each month, easily and at scale.

Our Areas of Expertise

For your business to succeed in the challenging Chinese market, you’ll need to translate all your content quickly, efficiently and affordably. Lionbridge supports traditional and simplified Chinese translation of a wide range of document and content types, including:

  • Chinese website localization
  • Chinese mobile app localization
  • Chinese game localization
  • Chinese product description translation
  • Customer support translation
  • Chinese marketing copy, ads and social media
  • Chinese news articles and entertainment
  • Chinese travel listings and guides
  • Chinese document translation
  • Chinese emails, letters and more

Chinese Translation Tips


Traditional vs Simplified Chinese

There are two distinct versions of written Chinese. In the mid-twentieth century, in an effort to increase the literacy rate, the People’s Republic of China began a process of simplifying written Chinese. As a result, two versions of written Chinese came into being: traditional and simplified. Simplified Chinese is predominantly used in mainland China, Malaysia and Singapore, whereas traditional Chinese is primarily used in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Learn more about when, where and how to use both traditional and simplified Chinese.

Our Chinese Translators

Lionbridge’s Chinese translators are experts in their field with years of professional translation experience under their belts. That’s why global companies trust Lionbridge to produce high-quality translated content at lightning speed. Our innovative translation platform and global network of translators means that no matter the size or complexity of your Chinese translation project, we can deliver on time, every time, with quality assured.

Popular Chinese Translation Phrases

Take a look at some of the most searched-for Chinese translations of English phrases.

What to translate from English Chinese (Simplified) translation Pinyin*
Hello 你好 Nǐ hǎo
Thank you 谢谢 Xièxiè
Goodbye 再见 Zàijiàn
Good morning 早上好 Zǎoshang hǎo
I love you 我爱你 Wǒ ài nǐ
I miss you 我想你 Wǒ xiǎng nǐ
Good luck 祝你好运 Zhù nǐ hǎo yùn
Happy New Year 新年快乐 Xīnnián kuàilè
Happy birthday 生日快乐 Shēngrì kuàilè

* Pinyin, which literally translates as “spell-sound”, is the standard system of romanized spelling for transliterating Chinese.

Chinese Language Facts

Chinese is the oldest written language on the planet and is part of the Sino-Tibetan language family. In the 1950s, a form of simplified Chinese was developed. Today, this system continues to be used in mainland China, while the traditional version remains in use in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau. 

  • With nearly 1.3 billion native speakers worldwide, about 15% of the world’s population speaks a dialect of Chinese as their native tongue.
  • Written Chinese dates back over 3,000 years. It consists of more than 20,000 distinct characters.
  • Chinese is one of the six official languages of the United Nations, along with Arabic, English, French, Russian and Spanish.
  • The Chinese language has seven major dialect groups, and each has its own variations. Mandarin dialects are spoken by 71.5 percent of the population.

Chinese Dialects

Although native speakers will often describe Chinese as a single language, it is more accurately thought of as a language family. Linguists disagree on just how many varieties of Chinese exist, but it is generally accepted that there are between 7 and 13.

With approximately 960 million speakers, Mandarin is the most common Chinese dialect. Mandarin is also referred to as Standard Chinese and is the official state language of China and Taiwan. According to official estimations, roughly 70 percent of Chinese citizens currently speak Mandarin as a first or second language. 

Wu, or Shanghainese, and Cantonese Chinese are key dialects of the Chinese language, with roughly 70 million and 60 million speakers respectively. Despite sharing some vocabulary, Cantonese and Mandarin are mutually unintelligible, due to their differing systems of grammar, lexicon and pronunciation.

Lionbridge’s native Chinese translators are experts in Mandarin, Wu and Cantonese, making them fully equipped to optimize your content for your target audience.

Chinese Localization Tips


Localizing Websites using Hreflang Meta Tags

When translating a website, it’s important to ensure that search engines can understand exactly which language your content is available in. In addition to the language attribute on the <html> tag, each page should also include a <head> section in which links to its localized equivalent are listed.

If the primary language of your website is English, for example, and you want to translate it into Chinese (Simplified), then every translated page should include the following block of code in the <head> section:

<link rel="alternate" href="https://example.com/about/" hreflang="en" />

<link rel="alternate" href="https://example.com/zh-hans/about/" hreflang="zh-hans" />

Keep in mind that this block should be added to both the original and the localized versions of your page (in this case: example.com/about/ & example.com/zh-hans/about/). By doing this, each page points to every available localized version of itself, making it easy for search engines to understand the structure of your site and display the appropriate translation for every user.

Targeting a Language and a Country

In addition to specifying the language of your content, you can also specify countries that you would like to target. This is ideal for a language that is spoken in multiple countries, such as Chinese. To do this, the target country can be included in the hreflang attribute, like so:

<link rel="alternate" href="https://example.com/zh-hans/" hreflang="zh-hans" />

<link rel="alternate" href="https://example.com/zh-hans-SG/" hreflang="zh-Hans-sg" />

<link rel="alternate" href="https://example.com/zh-hans-TW/" hreflang="zh-Hans-tw" />

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