Reviews Written in Another Language

A review you cannot read

Across Metro Vancouver, many customers speak Cantonese, Mandarin, Punjabi, Tagalog or Korean at home, and some of them write their reviews in those languages.

The owner sees the stars, which need no translation, and a block of text that may as well be blank.

So the review sits unanswered. Other readers who share the reviewer's language see a complaint, or a compliment, that the business apparently ignored.

Reading them is the easy part. Replying well depends on who works for you.

What arrives

• Chinese, in traditional or simplified characters, from Cantonese and Mandarin speakers.
• Punjabi, in Gurmukhi script or in English letters.
• Korean, in Hangul, the Korean alphabet.
• Tagalog, often mixed with English in the same sentence.
• English written as a second language, which can read blunter than intended.

The first trips people up. Cantonese and Mandarin are spoken very differently, but reviews from both are usually written in Chinese characters, so the useful question is which script, not which spoken language.

Reading them

Free machine translation is good enough to tell praise from complaint, and to see what the review is about.

It is not good enough to reply to. It misses tone, slang and sarcasm, turns dish and product names into odd literal phrases, and can make a mild comment sound harsh or a harsh one sound mild.

Names suffer most. A dish, a street or a staff member's name can come back as an ordinary word, and the review then seems to make no sense.

Use it to sort reviews, then ask someone who reads the language before you answer anything that matters.

How other readers see it

Readers who share the reviewer's language read every word, and they also see whether the business replied. An unanswered complaint in their language suggests the business does not listen to people like them.

Readers who do not share it see the stars, and the platform may offer them a machine translation. Google and Facebook can both show one.

The star rating counts in your average whatever language the words are in. A one-star review in Korean pulls the average down exactly as much as one in English.

Replying in the reviewer's language

When someone on staff writes the language well, reply in it. It shows the reviewer they were understood, and it reads naturally to everyone else who shares the language.

Add the same reply in English underneath, so every other reader can follow the exchange, and so the owner knows exactly what was said in the business's name.

Do not paste a machine translation in as a reply. Tone and formality matter, and Korean, for one, has levels of politeness that a translation tool can easily get wrong.

Reply in the language the review is written in, not one guessed from the reviewer's name. Plenty of customers write in English whatever they speak at home.

A worked example

A Korean restaurant on a busy suburban strip is run by an owner who reads Korean and English, with four servers and a kitchen of six.

Reviews arrive mostly in English and Korean, and the owner answered those. The few written in Chinese sat without replies, some for months.

A translation tool turned one of them, a two-star review from the winter, into a muddle about soup and a table.

One of the servers, who reads Chinese, read it properly: the reviewer had been quoted a ten-minute wait for a table and waited forty.

The owner wrote a short reply in English: an apology, the new way the host quotes waiting times, and an invitation to come back. The server wrote it in Chinese, and both versions went up together.

Reading the backlog also turned up two older Chinese reviews praising one of the servers by name. Those got replies too, and the thanks were passed on to her.

Now the server checks the Chinese reviews once a week, in a paid half hour, and the owner approves every reply before it is posted.

Who on staff can help

Ask which languages your staff read and write, and whether they are willing to help with reviews. Some will be glad to; others would rather not, and that is their choice.

Treat it as part of the job, with time set aside and paid. Do not hand an angry review to a new server on a busy Friday night.

The owner or manager should approve every reply. Whoever writes it, the reply speaks for the business.

Keep a short note of who reads which language, so the next review does not wait for someone to remember.

Complaints follow the same rules

A complaint in any language gets the same treatment: thank the reviewer, acknowledge the problem without arguing, say what has changed, and give a phone number or email address for taking it further in private.

If someone on staff speaks the reviewer's language, say so and name them, so a call or a visit is easier to arrange.

Reviews that break the platform's rules, such as spam or abuse, can be flagged whatever language they are in.

When the complaint is about language

Some reviews are about language itself: a customer who could not make themselves understood, or who felt rushed while trying.

Answer those without defensiveness. Thank the reviewer, say what you offer now, such as written quotes, a price list they can point to, or the shifts when someone who speaks their language is working, and invite them back.

Then fix the gap inside the business. A review like that usually describes something other customers met quietly and never mentioned.

The counter-case

Not every business needs a translation routine.

A business that gets one review a year in another language can handle it when it comes. A short compliment understood through machine translation can be answered with a simple thank-you in English.

And a reply in a language nobody at the business can check is riskier than a clear reply in English.

Where reviews arrive regularly in languages you do not read, though, someone fluent should read them every week.

This month

1. List reviews in languages nobody has read.
2. Run each through machine translation to sort them.
3. Ask staff which languages they read and write.
4. Agree paid time for reading and drafting replies.
5. Reply in both languages where staff can write it.
6. Approve every reply before it goes up.
7. Check weekly from now on.

Step one usually turns up more than owners expect. Reviews in other languages collect quietly, and the oldest unanswered complaint may be the first thing a new customer who reads that language sees.

Finding reviews and mentions in the first place is covered in mentions of your business you never see.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.