An English press release dropped into a translation engine produces Chinese text. It does not produce a Chinese press release — and Chinese editors can tell the difference inside one paragraph.
Here is the uncomfortable part. A Chinese media desk reads a machine-translated release and does not think "this needs editing" — it thinks "this was not written for us" and moves on. Editors are measured on what they publish, not on what they rescue, so the default action on anything that reads as translated is deletion. That is why translation quality is not a polish step at the end of a campaign. It decides whether the campaign happens at all.
Three specific failures, in the order an editor encounters them.
English business writing runs long, subordinate and passive. Chinese news writing runs short, front-loaded and factual. Machine output keeps the English rhythm with Chinese words, which reads as stilted within two sentences.
Company names, product names, job titles, institutions and industry terms all have settled Chinese renderings. A translation engine has no way to know that your company already has an official Chinese name — and getting it wrong is a factual error, not a style issue.
An English release leads with the announcement and its own importance. A Chinese release leads with what changed and for whom. The facts are the same; the first two paragraphs are not, and those are the only two an editor reads before deciding.
A rejected release does not fail loudly. It simply produces no coverage, and the money is spent. This is the single most common reason a technically fine announcement goes nowhere in China — and it is entirely avoidable.
Three real patterns we fix on almost every English release that comes in. The left column is what a translation engine returns; the right is what an editor will actually run.
我们非常激动地宣布，我们已经成功完成了 A 轮融资……
"We are thrilled to announce" survives as 我们非常激动地宣布 — a phrase Chinese business media associates with marketing copy, not news.
XX 公司近日宣布完成 A 轮融资，融资金额为 X 万元，由 XX 领投。
Number and lead investor move into the first sentence. The company's enthusiasm is not news; the amount is.
该公司的一名发言人在一份声明中表示……
Literal rendering of "a spokesperson said in a statement" — a construction Chinese reporting uses sparingly and never twice.
公司方面表示，……
Attribution is kept but compressed. Chinese business desks attribute once and then let the facts carry the paragraph.
我们将继续利用我们的协同效应来推动增长……
"Leverage synergies" translates into words that carry no information in Chinese, and marks the paragraph as promotional.
公司计划通过整合双方渠道资源，进一步扩大在华东地区的市场份额。
Abstract corporate language is replaced with something concrete enough for a journalist to quote or challenge.
Translation here is a four-step editorial process, not a language conversion.
We take your English source and confirm the non-negotiables up front: the company's official Chinese name, product names, the correct Chinese renderings of job titles and partner institutions, and which two or three facts must survive into the first paragraph.
An editor who writes Chinese business news daily rebuilds the release from your source rather than translating sentence by sentence. Quotes are kept intact and translated faithfully — everything around them is restructured to Chinese news order.
A second pass against a fixed glossary: proper nouns, industry terms, units, currency, dates and figures. This is where imported English releases most often carry silent factual errors, and it is the step machine translation can never perform.
We send you the Chinese text with an English back-translation of the headline and opening paragraphs, so you can confirm the meaning before it goes anywhere. This also means you have a Chinese version of your own release you can reuse.
These are the conventions we apply to every release. They are also a useful checklist if you are preparing a Chinese version in-house.
| Element | Rule we apply | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Script | Simplified Chinese only | Mainland outlets publish simplified; traditional reads as an import from Hong Kong, China, Macao, China or Taiwan, China |
| Company name | Official Chinese name, with the legal English name in brackets on first mention | An invented transliteration becomes a search mismatch for your own brand |
| Job titles | Standard Chinese equivalents, not literal translations | "Chief Growth Officer" has no settled Chinese form and must be rendered descriptively |
| Institutions | Official Chinese names of universities, government bodies and partners | Wrong institution names are a credibility problem with the institution, not just the reader |
| Currency | Original currency retained, with an RMB conversion where the amount is the news | Chinese readers expect local scale, and an unconverted figure reads as unedited |
| Dates | Year-month-day order, no ordinal suffixes | Direct carry-over of English date formats is one of the clearest machine-translation tells |
| Units | Metric, with Chinese market conventions for things like screen and vehicle sizes | Mismatched units force the reader to convert, which they will not do |
| External links | Removed from the body text | Chinese media platforms generally strip or penalise outbound links — see editorial guidelines |
Translation and localisation are part of the package price at CN NEWSWIRE, not a line item added afterwards. If your source is in English, send it as it is — the Chinese version is prepared as part of the work, and you keep the text. Packages start at USD 89.
We rewrite it. A literal translation is the fastest way to get rejected by a Chinese desk. Our editors work from your English source and rebuild it as a Chinese press release — same facts, same quotes, but structured and phrased the way Chinese business media actually publishes.
Standard releases are returned within one to two business days, and the translation is included in your package rather than billed separately.
Yes, and we will still review it before submission. Many of the releases we turn back are not badly written — they are machine translated, and the terminology and sentence structure mark them out to an editor within a paragraph. Better to have us check it than to spend a placement finding out.
Translation is bundled with distribution because the two are not really separable — a Chinese press release that no outlet publishes has no value. If you only need the text for internal use, email us and we will quote separately.
Simplified Chinese only, which is what mainland media publish. Traditional Chinese is used in Hong Kong, China, Macao, China and Taiwan, China, and is rarely the right choice for a mainland distribution.
We will tell you honestly whether it works as a Chinese news story before you commit to a package.