Promoting in Asia

Plan

[2_much]

I've read through almost every post in this forum and have a vague idea of what I need to do now.

I have a few questions.

I was thinking about having a site translated into Mandarin (traditional), Cantonese, Taiwanese, Japanese, Korean, and Hindi.

This is the outline of my procedure:

1.Translate site into each language
2.Register a Domain for each language, with a keyword in that language
3.Submit ENGLISH version to the English version of each search engine or directory
4.Submit Translated version to the local version of each SE or directory

I'm thinking this will get everyone who:

1. Looks in the English search engine in english
2. Looks in the regional engine in English
3. Looks in the regional engine in their language

Does this sound okay? Any ideas suggestions? I may be totally off in this, so I'd love guidance.

Thanks!

[Woz]

It looks like you will have the bases all covered. Lets go through them:-

1.Translate site into each language

This ia a good start. The main difference between Mandarin and Cantonese is really the pronounciation so it is probably not a good idea to equate one dialect with a particular character set. In general, even though the various Chinese Languages and Dialect can sound very different, in essence the Written Language is conssistant.

So really we should be talking about translating into different character sets rather than languages. However, having said that, in some respects it is easier to link Cantonese and Mandaring with character sets so we might stretch the riules a little.

Simplified Chinese could be equated with Mandarin and so should cover Mainland China and a goodly proportion of overseas Chinese including Malaysia and Singapore.

Traditional Chinese could be associated with Cantonese and so should cover Hong Kong and most of the Overseas Chinese.

The odd one out is Taiwan where thay speak Mandarin but still mainly use Traditional Chinese characters so it would be covered by the Traditional Character translation.

There will be slight differences of course in the slang used but as long as you get competant, preferably local, translators you should be OK.

I have no experience in the other languages and so will leave that up to our other members.

2.Register a Domain for each language, with a keyword in that language

Your initial hurdle is giong to be registering those domains. Are you considering registering .com's or coutry specific domains? Both ways wil present their own set of challenges.

1) .com's - this is certainly the easier way out, but quite a few of the coutry specific Search Engines have heavy biases towards local domains and possibly language sets. MSN.country (via Inktomi) for example have a very heavy bias towards a local domain and, unless the search terms is rather specific, generic domains don't get much of a look in.

2) local domains will certainly raise you in the SERPs, but almost all of the coutries you have mentioned require a local presence to register a domain (not sure about India). Some ISPs or Registrars seem to offer a back door registration by registering the domain at their address, but I often wonder about the consequences of losin even a small amount of control over your domain like that.

3.Submit ENGLISH version to the English version of each search engine or directory
4.Submit Translated version to the local version of each SE or directory

In most cases this can be done at the same time. If you are going to target the MSNs through Ink then perhaps one of the resellers would be able to give you more information and assistance.

Hope this helps,

Onya
Woz

[Eric_Jarvis]

why Hindi?...it's an absolute beggar to do involving embedded fonts since Unicode support is poor, and pretty much every Hindi speaker with Internet access is fluent in English...it's a good political statement to make, but if that's the idea you should also do either Urdu or Bengali so that there is a Hindu and a Moslem language

I'd drop Hindi and go for Javanese

[web_india]

India doesn't make it necessary to have a local presence - a local admin would do.

as of now .in domains are not that easy to get vis-a-vis .com or others and most indians go for .com anyway. Even the hindi sites of regional newspapers have .com as domain name.

[web_india]

and pretty much every Hindi speaker with Internet access is fluent in English...
>> I would put it this way that 99% of the Indians with internet access are able to read and understand english.

you should also do either Urdu or Bengali so that there is a Hindu and a Moslem language I'd drop Hindi and go for Javanese
>> actually depends on your products/services, your target market

[Eric_Jarvis]

web_india...what are your thoughts on encoding of Devanagiri (for those who don't know, that's the script used for Hindi and some other Indian languages)characters...by choice I'd like to use straight utf-8, but I'm being told that isn't possible and I'll have to use a dynamic font

[2_much]

Thank you SO much for your help. I feel like a newbie all over again :)

Ok, so having understood the language issues, what about promotion.

I was confused about how to submit to the search engines. So now I have the following questions.

I picked what I thought to be the top SE's and directories in the places I'm going to promote. The question marks are for:
- what's the URL for that country?
- can I submit directly, or does submitting to the main .com get me in?

Any help, guidance, corrections would be appreciated.

1. JAPAN -
Directories:
[yahoo.co.jp...]
[dmoz.org...]
Looksmart (?)

Search Engines:
www.google.co.jp/
japan.infoseek.com/
goo.ne.jp,
search.lycos.co.jp/
www.inktomi.com/japan/
fast ????

CHINA
Directories:
sohu.com, sina.com.cn, 163.com, cn.yahoo.com

Search Engines:
Inktomi (?)
Fast (?)
baidu.com

KOREA
Directories:
???

Search Engines:
www.inktomikorea.co.kr

INDIA
Directories:
[in.yahoo.com...]

Search Engines:
Google (?)
Inktomi (?)

[web_india]

eric... Devanagari Web pages with UTF-8 encoding are supported by Internet Explorer 5 (or higher) with Windows 95 (or higher), and by the iCab Web browser for Macintosh. Netscape Navigator 6 for Windows also seems to be able to display Unicode Devanagari.

BBC Hindi site uses utf-8

You must be knowing but for others info - the unicode output can be viewed correctly on your computer if there is a Unicode font with support for Indian Language Scripts installed, and the web browser is configured to use that font for Unicode UTF-8 documents.

Unicode Devanagari Fonts :

1) Mangal - 675 glyphs in version 1.20
Designed as a User Interface font
Ranges: Basic Latin (numbers and punctuation); Devanagari
OpenType layout tables: Devanagari
Styles: Regular
Availability: Supplied with Windows 2000 and Windows XP

2) Raghu8 - 671 glyphs in version 0.99
Produced by the Indian National Center for Software Technology
Ranges: Basic Latin (numbers and punctuation); Devanagari
OpenType layout tables: Devanagari
Styles: Regular
Availability: Can be downloaded from BBC Hindi

3) Arial Unicode MS, Code2000 and TITUS Cyberbit Basic can also display Devanagari

[web_india]

India :

Google does has a hindi search at
[google.com...]

also has a category for hindi sites (though I don't think many Indians are even aware of it)
[directory.google.com...]

but for inclusion you get into international, you are in.

three most popular Indian portals are all powered by google

rediff.com
sify.com
indiatimes.com

So get into google main and you have got the most of India.

Also, rediff and indiatimes have their own small directories for Indian sites.

[web_india]

2_much :
you may also consider khoj.com (one of the earlier popular directories, during the dotcom boom was bought by sify and is now part of sify - btw, khoj in hindi means search)
also 123india.com has a web directory of its own

[2_much]

Thanks so much for all your help web_india, I really appreciate it.

I feel like I have a good chance now to succeed in India :)

Thanks!

[web_india]

thanks 2_much

please feel free to ask in case you require any further info.

wish you success for your Indian venture.

[kch333]

you seem to get confused that: cantoonese, traditional chinese and taiwanese.....

there are only two character here, nobody say Taiwanese or cantoonese , there are only Traditional chinese and Simplified chinese for internet here.

and I think, why you want to register a domain especially for the translating? I wonder.

As I know, you just need to have a chinese friend to help you translate two kind of chinese on different windows operation.( I have ever test to use only one system, google usually ignore the other one)

I am just a new learner, this my opinion.

kch333

[whats up skip]

I have said before in this forum;

DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY ON LOOKSMART JAPAN!

I paid up and it was the biggest waste of money.

Just focus on Google and think about Yahoo.

Yahoo Japan is just sooooo much money.

We have tried everything to get into Goo and just cannot seem to get in.