Who are the owners of Global Bowen?

Global Bowen's project managers own the company.

What does "Global Bowen" represent?

“Global Bowen” stands for “Empower Communication”, indicates that our mission is to provide the powerful communication service to help our global clients a successful launch in Asian market.

Who are Global Bowen's employees?

The key to Global Bowen's success is our capable in-house staff. All team members have accumulated many years of translation/localization experience after their graduation from universities or their completion of doctoral or master's degrees.

In addition to our capable in-house team, we have a large supply of qualified freelance translators in different technical areas working with Global Bowen.

Why does Global Bowen keep such a big in-house team? And why does Global Bowen use freelancers?

Some of our projects are very big, with more then several million words that need to be translated, and more than 20 to 30 team members who will work for five to six months to finish them. All of the team memebers need to share the same translation memory database over a local network to maintain translation consistency for software UI and terminology. At the same time, face to face communication is absolutely essential to ensure good quality. The best way to realize these goals is to use a big in-house team. Although the cost maybe higher, the resulting quality is worth it. We believe that our large in-house team is one of the reasons that we enjoy such a good reputation for quality.

However, software localization and technical translation projects can involve a wide range of technical fields. If we were to have all these projects done by an in-house team familiar with these technical fields, we would have to keep even more in-house translators, our costs would increase dramatically, and our customers' expenses would increase, too.

Global Bowen's solution to this problem is to use our in-house team for most of our projects (80%), and freelance teams for the projects that are outside of our in-house team's areas of technical expertise.

Many customers have found that most localization companies and translation agencies in China can not provide steady quality services. The main reason for this is that most projects are done by a limited staff of in-house translators (refer to About China L10N); most "freelance translators" in China are actually only part-time translators.

Does Global Bowen use machine translation?

No.

Global Bowen never uses machine translation. We believe that translation is a creative process, and that good quality requires not only language skills (in both the source and target lanaguages), but also technical experience and knowledge. However we do strongly suggest that our clients take advantage of translation memory database technology, which will help to save money and improve quality in the long run.

What about EC's facilities?

We are equipped with the most advanced new technology, such as, TRADOS, Catalyst, TTT for PC (for AS400 SW localization), RoboHELP, SDLX, and Star Transit. And all PCs and office equipment are integrated through our local network.

Does Global Bowen have an FTP server?

Yes.

We have two FTP servers, one hosted in the United States and the other in China, so that both our overseas and domestic clients can access the FTP server at high speed.

Does Global Bowen provide translation memory?

Yes, if required. Please specify the name of the tool and its version. We regularly use TRADOS, SDLX, Catalyst, Star Transit, TM/2, and TTT for PC. We have also developed tools to convert between different translation memory formats.

What's the difference between Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese?

There are three main differences:

- The appearance of the Chinese characters is different. The characters of Traditional Chinese look more complex than the characters of Simplified Chinese

- The character sets are different. Simplified Chinese uses GB code, and Traditional Chinese uses BIG5. If you are using a Win 2000/NT or above operating system, both types of Chinese characters are in Unicode.

- The terminology is different between Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese.

Most Chinese can understand both forms of the languages. Almost all the word orders and sentence structures are the same, but the language style is different.

How can I review Chinese characters on my PC without changing my OS?

You can install applications, such as RichWin 97, or NJStar on you PC. These applications can help you switch between English, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese, and some even enable you to review Korean and Japanese. If your system is Unicode, you only need to install Chinese fonts to review Chinese characters.

Please visit the following websites to download free copies of these applications:
Richwin 97: http://www.srsnet.com/ or http://www.sina.com.cn/
NJStar 2.2: http://www.njstar.com/

If you have none of these applications, you can still review Asian characters in PDF or EPS format.

Does Global Bowen provide hard copy for document translations?

If the volume is large, we will charge for hard copy delivery, because the cost for postage is very high here in China. If a hard copy is required only as a quality review, we can provide you with PDF files that can let you review our translation without installing any other application on your PC or changing your OS: you only need to have Adobe Reader.

Can Global Bowen deal with all technical fields?

No. We can only deal with those technical fields in which we are capable of providing high quality.
Global Bowen is continually striving to add new technical fields to expand its technical coverage.

Website Keywords: software localization, Chinese localization, Chinese translation, Chinese typesetting, English into Chinese, simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, translation into Chinese