Museum audio guides in Chinese

How to provide an audio guide in Chinese

A Chinese guide is added to a guide that already exists rather than built from nothing. The English stops are translated, reviewed by someone who reads Chinese, and narrated, and the Chinese version then sits behind the same QR code the English version already uses. Nothing on the wall changes, and no second sign is printed.

In practice a venue works through it in this order, and the review step is the one most often skipped and most often regretted.

• Settle the regional variant and register before any translation starts
• Translate the English stops, keeping the source text locked while that happens
• Have a Chinese reader review it, ideally someone who knows the collection
• Narrate the reviewed text, checking proper nouns and place names first
• Publish it behind the QR codes already on the wall, with no reprinting

What Chinese needs from your layout

Chinese is dramatically more compact than English, often around half the character count for the same meaning.

Chinese text has no spaces between words and can wrap at almost any character, so it fills a text block differently to English. Short labels that looked cramped in English often look sparse in Chinese.

Simplified or Traditional is not a font setting

Simplified characters are standard in mainland China and Singapore, Traditional in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau. They are different written standards, and converting between them mechanically produces text that reads as careless to the other audience.

Vocabulary differs as well as characters, so a genuinely bilingual offer means two versions rather than one file run through a converter. If your visitors come from both, treat them as two languages in the plan.

Getting the Chinese narration right

Narration in Chinese raises questions that do not exist in English, and they are far cheaper to answer before a voice records anything than after.

• Mandarin is the default for a general audience; Cantonese is a separate recording, not an accent.
• Tones carry meaning, so a mispronounced proper noun becomes a different word rather than a slightly odd one.
• Non-Chinese place names need a decided romanisation or transliteration before recording.

Where Chinese fits in your language plan

Across the New Zealand museums using Journey Pal, between 50% and 60% of guide use is in English. That is our own usage data, and it is worth knowing before committing to a long list of languages: local-language listening is usually the largest share, and translations extend a guide rather than being the reason for one.

That makes Chinese an addition to a working guide rather than a prerequisite for launching. Get the source script right, publish it, then add Chinese where your visitor numbers justify the translation and, just as importantly, where you have someone who can review it.