Contents8
In short
Asia is not one market: China is an ecosystem of its own, and Southeast Asia brings together countries with different languages, payments and habits.
The channel is chosen before the language: your own website, a local marketplace, or both.
The country’s payment methods and messaging apps matter as much as the translation.
Translation is done country by country, with a reviewer who reads each language: Simplified or Traditional Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese and Indonesian are not one “Asian language”.
A European company opening up to Asia often thinks first about translating its website. That is the step least visible on the other side. A Chinese buyer searches on another engine, pays with another tool and contacts the seller through another messaging app; a Thai or Indonesian buyer often shops on a marketplace rather than on a brand’s website. Translating before choosing the channel means translating pages nobody will find.
This article sets out what changes, from the point of view of a company selling from Europe. It extends our articles on website translation and localize, don’t just translate.
China: an ecosystem of its own
Three differences change the starting plan.
The search engine is not Google. In September 2026, according to StatCounter, Baidu received a little under half of search engine visits in China, and Google around 1.5%. Keyword research is therefore redone on other tools, as explained in keywords abroad: redo the research, don’t translate it.
Part of the Western web does not respond there. Google’s services are the best-known example: its reCAPTCHA documentation even provides another domain for cases where google.com is not accessible. A page that depends on fonts, maps or scripts hosted by these services can stay blank for several seconds. And a website hosted on servers in mainland China must obtain an ICP filing before it is served, Alibaba Cloud points out, and it blocks access to an unfiled domain. Hosting is therefore decided with the market, not afterwards.
Payment and contact go through apps. Stripe describes Alipay as a wallet with more than a billion active users, and WeChat Pay as WeChat’s wallet, with more than 800 million users. Both can be accepted from a European account with this provider, and other providers offer them too: check with yours. For contact, WeChat plays the role WhatsApp plays in Europe.
That leaves the question of the channel. A foreign brand can go through a Chinese cross-border marketplace, which carries trust, payment and logistics, rather than its own website. The website then serves as a brand showcase and proof, and must remain accessible from the country.
Southeast Asia: ten countries, as many markets
The annual report by Google, Temasek and Bain on the region’s digital economy gives the scale:
the e-commerce gross merchandise value forecast for 2025 in the region
of payments there are digital
there shop online
of gross merchandise value goes through video commerce
Behind these figures, each country has its language (Thai, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Malay, Tagalog, English in Singapore and the Philippines), its payment methods and its apps. Three points come up everywhere.
Part of the sales happen outside brand websites. The share of video commerce, above, says it on its own, and regional marketplaces add to it. Your own website can then serve to reassure and capture business customers, while consumer sales go through the platforms.
Local payment sometimes requires a local entity. Bank QR code payment is common: in Thailand, PromptPay is paid by scanning a QR code with your bank’s app. At Stripe, only accounts based in Thailand can accept it. Before promising a payment method, check that it is available from your country of establishment.
Messaging apps vary from one country to another. The one your customers open every day is not necessarily WhatsApp: the contact button is chosen country by country, based on what they use.
Your own website, a marketplace, or both?
Your own website
Your brand, your prices, your customer data
Hosting, payment and search visibility to build yourself
Useful for business sales and proof of credibility
Local marketplace
Traffic, payment and logistics already in place
The platform’s fees, rules and competition
Useful for testing consumer demand
The choice is not made once and for all. You can start with a marketplace to measure demand, then open a website in the country’s language when sales justify it. Either way, product pages are translated at volume, with the checks described in translating product pages for export.
Language: one country, one language, one reviewer
Translating for Asia rarely means translating once.
Chinese comes in variants. Simplified characters are used in mainland China and Singapore, Traditional characters in Taiwan and Hong Kong, with differences in vocabulary. A single Chinese version does not serve all these markets.
The script changes the layout. Thai, Lao and Khmer do not use spaces between words: line breaking needs handling specific to these languages. Thailand also favours the Buddhist calendar, which affects displayed dates and forms, as detailed in localize, don’t just translate.
Tools are not equal from one language to another. A tool that is excellent in German can be average in Thai. The choice is made on your own texts, language by language, following the method in DeepL, Google or an LLM: which translates your trade best. Review, for its part, falls to a translator or reviewer who reads the language: for markets nobody reads in-house, it is the only protection against a mistake staying online for months.
From the field
On Palmora Property, a real-estate listings site in Thailand that we operate, published in six languages including Thai and Chinese, contact goes through WeChat, LINE or Telegram depending on the visitor’s language, since WhatsApp is blocked in China. Our routing table does not use the same translation tool for Chinese as for German, Thai is decided by a benchmark on the client’s own texts, and no personal data goes directly to a provider based in China.
That last point is a legal matter as much as a technical one: what happens to a text entrusted to a translation tool is covered in translation and GDPR: where your texts go, and contracts with a local distributor in translating a contract with AI: where it stops.
In what order to proceed
- Choose a country, not a region.
The one where your data already shows demand: visits, contact requests, distributors approaching you.
- Choose the channel.
A marketplace to test, your own website for the brand and business customers, or both.
- Connect the country’s payment and contact.
Wallets, QR code payment, local messaging, checking what is available from your country of establishment.
- Translate what sells first.
Product pages, home page, terms, with a glossary and a reviewer who reads the language.
- Measure, then expand.
A second country opens once the first has shown what it brings in.
The method is the same as in Europe, with more unknowns: which European market to open first and opening an English-speaking market detail how to test demand before translating everything.
What it costs
Translation is only one line in the budget, often the smallest. Add suitable hosting, platform fees, local payment method fees, customer service in the language and, for China, the formalities tied to hosting. The costs of translation itself are detailed in website translation cost: per word, per page, per market; a translation memory and a brand glossary bring down the upkeep of each language you open.
Where to start
Look at where your visits and requests from Asia already come from, country by country, then list for the first country you choose its search engine, its two main marketplaces, its payment methods and its messaging app. That sheet tells you whether your current website can serve, and what to translate first.
The rest of the work follows the articles in this section: automatic or reviewed translation for splitting the review, measuring translation quality for checking a language nobody reads in-house, translating customer support emails for replying in the language, translating software if you sell an app, and translating a whole blog for your content.
To prepare a first Asian market, from the website to the languages, tell us about your business and the target country: we start from what your data already shows.
Frequently asked questions
Do you need to host your website in China to sell to Chinese customers?
Not necessarily. A website hosted outside mainland China can remain accessible if it does not depend on blocked services, but it will often be slower. Hosting in mainland China requires an ICP filing before going live. A cross-border marketplace is another way in: it handles access, payment and logistics.
Which payment methods should you offer in Southeast Asia?
Those of the target country: mobile wallets, bank QR code payment such as PromptPay in Thailand, bank cards. Some can only be accepted with a local entity: check with your payment provider what is available from your country of establishment before announcing it on your website.
Is one Chinese translation enough for Taiwan and Hong Kong?
No. Mainland China writes in Simplified characters, Taiwan and Hong Kong in Traditional characters, with differences in vocabulary. One version per market, reviewed by someone who reads its language, avoids looking foreign to your own customers and using words they would not choose.
Which Southeast Asian country should you start with?
The one where your data already shows demand, and whose language, payment and contact you can serve. Singapore, where English is one of the official languages, can be served with an English website; the other markets require a translation into their language and local payment methods.
Sources
- StatCounter Global Stats, search engines in China (new tab)gs.statcounter.com
- Google, reCAPTCHA FAQ (new tab)developers.google.com
- Alibaba Cloud, what is an ICP filing (new tab)help.aliyun.com
- Stripe, Alipay documentation (new tab)docs.stripe.com
- Stripe, WeChat Pay documentation (new tab)docs.stripe.com
- Stripe, PromptPay documentation (new tab)docs.stripe.com
- W3C Internationalization, line breaking across scripts (new tab)w3.org
Jim · founder of Brain Plus AI
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