Traditional or Simplified Chinese: choosing a script for Richmond customers

Why this decision matters in Richmond

Richmond is one of the places in Canada where this choice really affects results. In the 2021 Census, Cantonese and Mandarin were each the mother tongue of about 23% of residents. Both groups read written Chinese, but not necessarily in the same script, and the choice of script signals who a page is for.

Get it right and a reader feels the page was written for them. Get it wrong and, even if they can read it, the page feels like it was meant for someone else. For a service business, that small hesitation can be enough for a customer to call a competitor instead.

The basics, briefly

Written Chinese comes in two standard forms:

• Traditional characters keep older, more complex forms. They are the standard in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.
• Simplified characters use reduced forms introduced in mainland China in the twentieth century. They are the standard in mainland China and Singapore.

Spoken language is a separate layer. Cantonese is widely spoken in Hong Kong and Guangdong; Mandarin is the standard spoken language of mainland China and Taiwan. That is why the old shortcut, "Traditional for Cantonese, Simplified for Mandarin", is only partly true. A Mandarin speaker who grew up in Taiwan usually reads Traditional characters.

Beyond the characters themselves, vocabulary and phrasing differ. The word for a common household item, a software term or a formal greeting may change between communities. A good translator knows these differences; a conversion tool usually doesn't.

A decision checklist

Work through these questions for each service you want to market.

1. Who are your best customers today? Look at recent jobs or sales. If you know where customers grew up or which script they use in messages, note it.
2. Which script do they write to you in? Texts, emails and review replies are the most reliable evidence you have.
3. Who answers enquiries? If your bilingual staff member reads one script far more comfortably than the other, that matters for follow-up.
4. What do competitors use? Look at the Chinese-language ads and pages of businesses you compete with in Richmond. Their choice is not proof, but a gap may be an opportunity.
5. What does your translator advise? Describe your target customer and ask. A qualified translator will have a view and can explain it.

If the answers point clearly one way, start there. If they are split, start with the script that matches your highest-margin service, and plan the second as a later test.

Three worked scenarios

These are illustrative situations, not real clients.

A renovation firm with referrals from long-settled families

Most of its Chinese-speaking customers are families who arrived from Hong Kong some years ago and message in Traditional characters. The owner's bilingual estimator reads Traditional comfortably.

Recommendation: Traditional Chinese for the landing page and ads, a Cantonese-capable phone line, and English kept strong for the many customers who are equally comfortable in English.

A tutoring centre near the City Centre

Its newer enquiries come from families who arrived from mainland China more recently, and messages arrive in Simplified characters, often through messaging apps.

Recommendation: Simplified Chinese pages and ads, with staff answering in Mandarin, and a review of which platforms those families actually use to find services.

A home-cleaning company with a mixed customer base

Customers write in both scripts, and margins are modest.

Recommendation: start with one script for one service, measure for 90 days, and add the second only if the first beats its break-even cost per enquiry. Keep each script on its own page; never mix them on one page.

How to set up pages and ads once you choose

Structure matters as much as the script itself.

• One script per page. Google determines a page's language from its visible content and recommends one language per page with separate URLs for each version. Treat Traditional and Simplified as two versions, such as /zh-hant/ and /zh-hans/.
• Link the versions. Add a visible switcher and proper hreflang annotations so each reader, and Google, can find the right one.
• Match ads to pages. Google says Search ads now match on the language of the ad itself, following a change that began in September 2026. A Traditional Chinese ad should lead to a Traditional Chinese page. Confirm current behaviour on Google's help page, as these settings change.
• Use the right fonts and encoding. Test both scripts on phones, since missing characters or fallback fonts look careless.

Our multilingual website service handles this structure, and multilingual ads keeps each script in its own ad group.

Finding and briefing a translator

Choose someone who translates into the specific script you need, ideally a professional with credentials you can check. In BC, the Society of Translators and Interpreters of British Columbia offers certification and a directory of translators and interpreters.

Give them a brief that names the target reader, the tone, the terms that must stay in English (such as your brand name or product model numbers), and the action you want the reader to take. Then have a second fluent reader review the result. Our translation review workflow sets out those steps.

Mistakes to avoid

• Mixing scripts on one page. It looks unprofessional to readers of both.
• Automatic conversion without review. It produces technically readable text with the wrong vocabulary.
• Choosing by dialect alone. Ask where your customers learned to read, not only what they speak.
• Forgetting the phone. A page in Traditional Chinese that leads to an English-only voicemail loses the caller.

If you'd like a second opinion on your choice, read about our language planning service, or call, text or email with a description of your customers.