Translate a business plan into Simplified Chinese

Figures: the first trap in a Chinese business plan

Chinese readers do not group numbers in thousands and millions but in 万 (ten thousand) and 亿 (one hundred million). In Chinese financial writing, €2,500,000 is commonly written 250万欧元 and €120 million 1.2亿欧元. A slip of one power of ten in your funding requirement undermines the whole document.

• Separators: Chinese uses the same convention as UK English, 1,234.5. If your source uses continental formats such as « 1 234,5 », check every figure: a decimal comma read as a thousands separator multiplies the value by a thousand.
• Abbreviations: £350k or €1.5m have no direct Chinese equivalent; the expected form is 35万英镑 or 150万欧元.
• Dates: 31/12/2025 becomes 2025年12月31日; Q1 2026 becomes 2026年第一季度.
• Financial year: in mainland China it follows the calendar year. If yours runs April to March, say so explicitly in the source.

A translation does not recalculate your forecasts: amounts stay in the document's currency. If your readers think in renminbi (人民币), add the equivalents to the source yourself.

Script, fonts and layout over 25 pages

A business plan of around 7,000 words takes two to three times fewer characters in Chinese, but each character is wider, so the space used barely changes and your tables and paragraphs keep roughly the same footprint.

• Fonts: a Latin font such as Garamond or Helvetica has no Chinese characters. The reader's software then substitutes a fallback font, often an awkward one. Use a font covering Simplified Chinese, such as Microsoft YaHei, SimSun or Noto Sans SC.
• Italics: Chinese typography has no italic; applied to hanzi it produces an artificial slant. Use bold for emphasis instead.
• Punctuation: it becomes full-width (，。：；), lists use the enumeration comma 、, and titles of cited reports go between 《》.
• Line breaks: with no spaces between words, text can break between any two characters. Check narrow table cells and headings that wrap onto two lines.

Financial vocabulary and the expected register

A 商业计划书 (business plan) is written in a formal, restrained register. Its sections have established headings: 执行摘要 (executive summary), 市场分析 (market analysis), 财务预测 (financial forecasts), 盈亏平衡点 (break-even point), 融资需求 (funding requirement).

• Local acronyms: abbreviations specific to your country's accounting or legal system mean nothing to a Chinese investor. Spell them out at first use in the source so they are rendered correctly.
• International acronyms: EBITDA or ROI are often kept as they are in Chinese financial documents, sometimes alongside a Chinese form.
• Proper names: your company, brand and product names usually stay in Latin script. Check on the free extract, then on the full translation, that they have not been translated.
• Legal forms: Ltd, GmbH or SAS have no exact Chinese equivalent; a short explanation in the source avoids an approximation.

What Manuce delivers, and what it does not

You upload the file and the quote appears immediately, based on the exact word count. After payment, a document of this size is translated in a few minutes and returned in its original format (Word, PDF, PowerPoint, Excel, plain text, Markdown, HTML, RTF or CSV), layout included. Files stay available in your client area.

• Essential is enough to read a Chinese partner's plan internally; Professional uses Métis, the financial specialist, for a document you will send out; Premium adds the most advanced engine and a cross-review.
• Chinese carries a surcharge: a ×1.6 coefficient on the per-word rate.
• Traditional Chinese (Taiwan, Hong Kong) is a separate language at Manuce: choose it for investors in Taipei or Hong Kong.

Manuce cannot read scanned PDFs (page images with no selectable text), nor text locked inside an image, such as an organisation chart pasted as a screenshot. Nor does Manuce produce certified or sworn translations: if an authority or bank requires one, you will need an accredited translator.

Preparing the file and checking the Chinese version

Before uploading:

• Send the original Word or Excel file rather than an exported PDF: financial tables translate more cleanly.
• Replace screenshots of tables with real tables.
• Spell out local acronyms and shorthand such as k or m after amounts.

When you receive it, have a Chinese-speaking reader check, in this order:

1. every amount in the summary and funding plan, comparing orders of magnitude with 万 and 亿;
2. column headers in the Excel appendices and any labels built by formulas;
3. your company and product names;
4. the font as displayed on a computer in China, if the file will be opened there.

In practice

1. Export your business plan as Word, Excel or a text-based PDF (not a scan) and spell out local acronyms.
2. Upload it and choose Simplified Chinese: the quote appears based on the exact word count.
3. Read the free translated paragraph, checking figures and proper names.
4. Pay, then download the translated file in its original format from your client area.
5. Have a Chinese-speaking reader check amounts, tables and fonts.