Lost in Translation
Phanuel Mawuli Kofi Segbefia There are a lot of online shopping platforms all over the globe, but one popular site that caught my attention since coming to China from Ghana is Taobao. Being China’s largest online shopping platform, Taobao is known for being very user-friendly, especially if you can read Chinese characters.
I love their services as they are committed to making it a pleasurable experience for the shopper. If you cannot speak Chinese, or you have difficulties with Taobao’s English translation, ask a friend to search for your desired items, talk with the Taobao seller and provide as much detailed information as possible. As with all marketing strategies worldwide, you are enticed to buy as much as possible. One tricky thing with Taobao is that, when you only want to buy based on the picture you see without taking the trouble to understand what is written, you could end up making the biggest mistake!
Once I bought a dress. From the picture shown on the site, it was a top and a skirt. I didn’t bother to translate the Chinese characters to confirm my purchase was exactly what I wanted and just went ahead and placed the order. After a few days I received a text message indicating my package had arrived. I joyfully opened the parcel and, to my surprise, found it was only the top part of the garment. I was so furious and then went back to the site to translate the Chinese characters related to the dress. I was shocked to see that it did refer to only the top of the dress. I blame myself for not translating before buying. Also, because the sellers are supposed to display the pictures of their products, I thought I was buying exactly what I saw, not knowing it was misleading.
Another aspect of shopping that was frustrating, before I was conversant with the language and could verbally talk to the sellers, is that the auto-translators don’t give the exactly accurate meaning of the characters. It is a huge mountain to climb trying to express yourself coherently with the auto-translator. At times, I would spend hours trying to reach a mutual consensus via translation with the seller, which was a great waste of time.
Like I stated above, Taobao has great services in place which really makes customers feel at home shopping. One of the features I especially like is the ability to return a product for replacement or refund. There are also times that items go missing, and you need to track or communicate with the seller to find the location of your parcel. In this case, too, both parties have difficulties in understanding each other. Sometimes [if you can speak some Chinese] the sellers feel or think it’s a fellow Chinese on the other side of the phone so they will just send you a tracking code to track your product. The interesting thing is you don’t even know where to start to track it. So hilarious!
To really enjoy another country’s culture or what they do, or to find it easy going about your day-to-day activities, we must all be willing to learn a little bit of the host country’s language or understand some basics of the culture. Interestingly, because I constantly buy from Taobao, I have become familiar with most of the Chinese characters; hence I don’t use an auto-translator anymore but can now just go direct to make orders. I’ve become very familiar with most of the features on Taobao as well.
For me personally, Taobao is the best. But as a popular online shopping site which the international community can use, it would, therefore, be of great benefit if they can at least have English or other language sites to assist people unfamiliar with Chinese to shop.
The author is a Ghanaian student studying in Jiangsu Province, east China