Would you be interested in a telephone interpretation service

[simonlaing]

Hi I am thinking of starting a telephonic interpretation service in China. It would probably bill you through your normal cellphone or landline similar to a 900 number. You could use it for international trade or dealing with simple communication problems like talking to the police after a car accident with your scooter. If I started it would you use it?

[adrianlondon]

How does it work ... do I call this number and then they call the police on my behalf, or do I wait for the police to arrive, then speak to you and hand my mobile to the police for you to deal with them?

Just curious. I clicked the "have get-by Mandarin and body language" option anyway, although people can't see that if I phone them.

[Prodigal Son]

How would that work - you're speaking with someone on the street you can't understand, so you call a number and keep passing the phone back and forth? Doesn't seem very practical. Plus local dialects and accents would complicate everything. Sometimes it already takes 3 minutes to explain my destination to a dense taxi driver, adding a telephone interpretor would make it 15 minutes.

[yonglin]

Are you completely sure that there is not a service like this already?

When I was working as a volunteer at a detention centre for asylum seekers here in Sweden, we used a phone interpretation service which provided translations between Swedish and all sorts of weird languages, with very short notice. Basically, they had a centre for receiving the phone calls, which would hold contacts to freelancing interpreters, who would call back within say, five minutes. It was extremely smooth.

I don't know if your target group would be companies or individuals. It seems to me that the market for companies would be more lucrative, since they would be willing to pay more. At the same time, they would require that interpreters have some kind of guaranteed standard or certification. After all, they might enter legally binding contracts based on the information obtained via the interpreter, and they need to be able to hold someone responsible if the translation is lacking or incomplete.

Although it would seem that individuals have lower demands on accuracy, I would expect that IF an individual would like to use a translation service, it would be for sorting out quite special and important matters. In cases like this, however, they would probably bring a friend with whom they have a connection (and who therefore is likely to do the very best for them).

As for, say, communicating with taxi drivers, I would expect demand to be quite low. People who cannot communicate in spoken Chinese would most likely develop strategies to deal with this very rapidly, such as making it a habit to have names of locations written down in Chinese characters. There might be demand for such a service at a very low price, but it seems uncertain whether your business would be profitable in this case.

As for talking to the police, I think that most foreigners in China are usually quite well-served by volunteering locals. For instance, I would imagine that some curious Chinese person with some level of English would come up and help the disoriented foreigner for free. Maybe if Chinese in general were a little less nice to foreigners, there would be more demand.

[liuzhou]

There is already a huge American company which does this internationally. My wife sometimes does stuff for them. I can' t remember the name but when I track her down I'll ask.

[simonlaing]

Thanks for the input.

Yes there are a few firms in the US that do this. Also like Sweden Australia has a developed system for refugees and immigrants it seems. But I have had trouble finding significant Chinese companies who do it. Hi Liuzhou if you could tell me the name of company and tell me how they do it that would be cool.

Our primary market would China to China interpretation or China to outside China.

Many chinese people are shy about speaking english and Chinese is a difficult language to learn. Perhaps a board about learning Chinese is not the best place to be asking about this but I think it could be useful espicially for people when they first get here.

Yonglin, the business market could be quite lucrative, but many companies might hire their own interpreters. Many of the translators here have specialized backgrounds so that might help with doing the interpretations.

Though there may be several factories without English skills where having this service to call the west could be very helpful.

There are a lot of non-chinese living in Shanghai and Beijing.I doubt if half of them can speak great Chinese.

Which market (Chinese business, or Chinese expat/ tourist/ students interaction) do you think would provide more business for this kind of service.

Thanks,

Simon:)

[zozzen]

i've used this service (from my friend for free). At first, I talked to my friend on the phone and passed it to my counterpart, but that was very inconvenient. Then I started using a speaker phone and i felt that we had a real-life interpretator. I would only use this service in an important and long enough conversation. For short conversation like telling a driver where to go, i would rather to use a dictionary.

[shanghaikai]

I believe there are services that already do this but I don't know of them off the top of my head. I voted that I wouldn't use it but know of people who might. Personally, I wouldn't use it because I can speak Mandarin fairly well.

I actually have a friend from France who is supposedly setting up a similar service as part of an overall relocation service for French people. I haven't spoken to him recently to know how far along that is but he obviously thinks there's a market.

While a lot of people say handing the phone back and forth is inconvenient, it still beats not communicating at all and frankly, I know a lot of people who resort to this. For the lonely foreigner without any decent bilingual Chinese friends, this service could be very useful as something of a safety blanket (depending on price).

A few immediate concerns that I would have is how you anticipate developing this business. You would need an access number and some system to handle potential demand. Obviously, one translator sitting in front of a phone 24 hours a day isn't really going to cut it. What are the costs, to you and to the end-user, for this sort of service? Would it be English only or would other languages be supported? The list goes on and on.

I do see it as being more of an emergency service for communications problems foreigners might have during mundane daily activities rather than a professional service for serious business negotiations. In those matters, I think people would hire an actual interpreter/translator.

Too many Chinese businesses simply don't care for the actual quality of the material they produce in English. The amount of Engrish I still encounter, even from large companies or government entities, that really should have the resources to ensure that their English is at least acceptable. It is a mix of ignorance, apathy, and the unwillingness to spend money. I think the foreigner market would provide you with more business, at least until you could provide us with more information on how you would appeal to Chinese companies.

[adrianlondon]

A more fun idea, and one I'd enjoy doing myself if I was fluent in Mandarin (which I'm not) would be a sort of Beijing rescue service.

Tourists or confused non-mandarin speaking expats could phone me, and I'd jump on my scooter and meet them wherever they are inside, say, the 5th ring, and act as a translator.

[roddy]

To be honest this isn't the best forum to ask - the majority of members here are either able to speak Chinese or in the process of learning. You might get a more enthusiastic response on more expat / travel orientated sites.

I'm pretty sure things like this are already up and running though - can't remember details, as it's not something I'd use myself. I can see it may be being worth doing if you can figure out how to market it cheaply and you already have someone sitting around an office so you don't have any extra labour costs. Dubious about it as a stand-alone business though. Maybe combine it with a premium tourist hotline where people can phone up and give you their location and you tell them how to get to a decent restaurant / get to the nearest subway station.

[gougou]

Maybe combine it with a premium tourist hotline where people can phone up and give you their location and you tell them how to get to a decent restaurant / get to the nearest subway station.

If in the process you create a job that involves getting paid for looking at Google Earth all day, you know where to find me!

[md1101]

i think it sounds like a brilliant idea and can imagine lots of tourists using it. i can already imagine people handing out flyers to all the white looking people at airport arrivals explaining in detail how to use the service. plus you could have a bunch of the flyers sitting in expat bars and advertise on all the big expat sites like shanghaiexpat.com.

roddy's right in that i can't imagine too many people on this forum needing to use it but im sure there are others who will need it. anyway its just my opinion. it would probably be used mostly for argument resolutions so you probably want patient employees who know the law well!

[gougou]

Flyers + flyers + ads + lawyers? I think you just raised the minute price to over 50 kuai.

[muyongshi]

Try 50 US. Lawyers are expensive!

[liuzhou]

There is already this one, too.

[simonlaing]

Shanghaikai: how you anticipate developing this business. You would need an access number and some system to handle potential demand. Obviously, one translator sitting in front of a phone 24 hours a day isn't really going to cut it. What are the costs, to you and to the end-user, for this sort of service? Would it be English only or would other languages be supported?

We envision it to be like a 110 number that you only dial 4 or 6 digits and the fee is charged to your phone bill. Billed Accounts could work espicially for tourists or businesspeople. We would start with English, Japanese, and Korean (there are a lot of Koreans in Jiangsu) to Chinese then add German and French possible later. We have a translation company with a small interpretation department already so this would be expanding their duties and hiring others for the off time. Yes, the costs loom large though Chinese salaries are low.. so...

I do see it as being more of an emergency service for communications problems foreigners might have during mundane daily activities rather than a professional service for serious business negotiations. In those matters, I think people would hire an actual interpreter/translator.

- Perhaps being the emergency interpreter would have enough business. Also if you knew you had the back up it might free you to try new activities.

Too many Chinese businesses simply don't care for the actual quality of the material they produce in English.

- yes Shanghaikai, this is true, but We are hoping to get some emergency services like police, banking or traders that might want to use our service because they don't even have basic english skills.

adrianlondon : Beijing rescue service.

I like the scooter Idea, or sending a taxi with directions where to go etc...

premium tourist hotline

This could be good as well for hotels, or night life, most of the small cities have very little publicity on what is going on in the cities.

liuzhou There is already this one, too.

I looked at the link you sent , it seems to be a british company that only does English and CHinese, they look like they just opened last week. Their webpage hasn't been translated to Chinese so they are looking just for western tourists.

Also Roddy, can you suggest some non-chinese speaking, CHina expat boards that might be good to consult?

Thanks,

Simon:)

[gougou]

The biggest problem I see for an emergency hotline is that the kind of person prone to be involved in emergencies is not the kind of person that would jot down your number before leaving home.

[shanghaikai]

Well, the number ideally would be easy to remember or something the newcomer would've stored into their cell phone soon after arriving in anticipation.

Try www.shanghaiexpat.com and run your idea through their gauntlet. Lots of very jaded expats there who hate China. ;)

I think the business idea could work but as with most things, it really hinges on your marketing efforts, in getting your service known to all incoming foreigners. This is not as easy as it sounds and could be potentially very expensive. Forget mass media ads like television commercials, of course, because that's not applicable. You can go internet advertising on popular forums or websites that people might first look at before coming to China. You could negotiate contacts with major travel agencies so they would recommend it to their customers. You could definitely pepper airports and universities with flyers, etc. etc. Until you've gotten your name out and have gotten traction with these people, it may be a lot of red ink. That, of course, is going after the B2C mass-market.

If you go B2B, especially with Chinese companies, I still stand by my pessimistic judgement that most Chinese companies haven't developed to the point where they really care because its not really that important for their business.

[simonlaing]

HI Shanghaikai,

I realize the marketing could be tricky. I have some background in marketing aswell, so it may be more interesting.

I appreciate the advice for the B2B, though I wonder for chinese services that interact with westerners, like police, post, hospitals if this might be an revenue creator?

I will look-up that website. Thanks,

Simon:)

[gougou]

I wonder for chinese services that interact with westerners, like police, post, hospitals if this might be an revenue creator?

I agree. While on an individual level, policemen, post clerks and nurses tend to be very friendly, on an institutional level, there just is no desire to help you - including with your language problems. So even in these institutions, you would need to get the foreigner to make the call.

I still believe that only a small fraction of people that need your number would save it in advance. Ideally, you would have your number visible where people need it - but that is almost impossible, as places with a lot of foreigners mostly will have some English-speaking staff (e.g. hospitals frequented by foreigners, post offices in central locations etc.). What you could try is combining your service with another one that is needed more regulary than emergency translations (e.g. the aforementioned information services). In this case, people would have more of an incentive to memorize your number.

Finally, if you have interpreting staff at hand already, you could always just give it a go to get a feel for the market. All you would need (assuming you have a phone ) is a couple of flyers to get the word out (or an ad in that's BJ if you're ready to spend a bit more) and then see how many people make use of it. If nobody calls you, you might want to rethink your business model - if 200 people call in one week, you might consider investing into a second phone line.