Last update: January 16, 2026
If you have any comments, suggestions, questions or need for an arbitration, create a topic in the Style Guide section, the Language Lead will get back to you.
Here you will find the guidance for Chinese Simplified, but you should also consider the guidance for all languages.
Capitalization
• In case of capitalized letter for a name, a person, a product, or any similar scenario, do not translate it but leave it as it is.
• Please do not follow the English capitalization but use Simplified Chinese linguistic rules instead. If the word in source is generally not translated in Simplified Chinese, you should convert the initial into corresponding upper-case letter translation.
Capitalize proper names
Proton Mail
Proton VPN
NetShield
Do not capitalize
• Internet addresses (domain names)
• e-mail address
Gender
• In Mandarin Chinese, there is no distinction made between the words sex and gender. Terms like “gender registration” or "legal gender” are referring to biological sex. 生理性别：认同性别 = Sex : Gender
• The wording and tone of the translation must avoid discrimination against gender.
| English | We avoid | We prefer |
|---|---|---|
| I am happy to help you. | 能帮到您是一件快乐的事。 | 很荣幸为您服务。 |
| If you are interested in Proton Mail | 若您被 Proton Mail 吸引 | Proton Mail 必会令您心动 |
| I am not used to this tool. | 我对这个工具不熟悉。 | 这工具对我而言很陌生。 |
• You can use passive language to avoid gender-specific verbs, but only if it doesn’t hurt readability and/or make the sentence sound unnatural.
• Apply the masculine form when an adjective, verb, or another part of speech refers to multiple nouns with different genders.
• Rephrase when you are unable to find a gender-neutral way.
• The gender and number of an acronym are determined by the gender and number of the translation for the governing noun of the extended form.
“parent folder” is masculine because the translation is“父”文件夹
CD-ROM Mastering is feminine because the translation is“母”盘
Abbreviations
Whenever possible, avoid using abbreviations.
Abbreviate the text only when you lack space (mainly buttons, option names or strings with specific character limitations) or when you need to ease the text readability. Instead of abbreviating (e.g., 4 or 5 consecutive words), summarize a term or a phrase in 2 or 3 words that can be written in full.
General criteria for shortening words:
• Omit at least two letters
• Truncate a word so that it ends with a consonant and place a period after it
• When a word contains a double consonant, truncate it at the second one and place a period after it
电子邮件 => 邮箱
IP 地址 => IP
Days abbreviations (in calendars, agendas, timetables… the names of days are written without a period for visual purposes):
| English | Translation | Abbreviation option 1 | Abbreviation option 2 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | 星期一 | 周一 | 一 |
| Tuesday | 星期二 | 周二 | 二 |
| Wednesday | 星期三 | 周三 | 三 |
| Thursday | 星期四 | 周四 | 四 |
| Friday | 星期五 | 周五 | 五 |
| Saturday | 星期六 | 周六 | 六 |
| Sunday | 星期日 | 周日 | 日 |
Acronyms
• Common examples are VPN (Virtual Personal Network), DNS (Domain Name Server), HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), etc.
• Commonly used acronyms do not need explanations (DVD, LED, TV, etc.).
• When an acronym is repeated several times in the same section, include its extended form in parentheses only for its first occurrence.
Pronouns
Mandarin Chinese has many words with the same pronunciation and different meanings, and even different pronunciations of the same word represent different meanings. When translating, try to avoid repetition of a single word in the same sentence, especially the use of “you (您)”, and the basic politeness will not be discarded because of informal translation.
Gerunds (“ing” ending)
It is important to distinguish whether the gerund expresses a continuous operation or not, and translate it accordingly. As an example, headers in English often use gerunds, which may not be correct for other languages.
When a gerund expresses a continuous operation, it is usually translated into Simplified Chinese with the pattern 正在… or 正… depending on the context. This approach is particularly relevant for sentences related to IT and technical subjects.
Examples of IT technical context:
| English | We avoid | We prefer |
|---|---|---|
| Generating keys | 生成密钥 | 正在生成密钥 |
| Importing | 导入 | 正在导入 |
For marketing contents, using 正在 all the time would make the Chinese sound too literal, so other alternatives are encouraged to avoid sounding like a machine translation.
Punctuation
• The first half of a pair of punctuation marks (such as (, ", <, [, {, ", ', etc.} must not appear at the end of the line; nor should the second half appear at the beginning of the line.
• There should be no punctuation at the beginning of any line or on a line by themselves.
• In the event of untranslated passages, please retain all text and punctuation formatting in the original text.
Period
For the period at the end of a sentence, adapt the source to your language usage.
Exclamation mark
• Exclamation marks are used to give emphasis.
• As their use is less common than in English, you should use them sparingly: feel free to change an exclamation mark into a period if it is more natural, but please don’t change a period into an exclamation mark.
| English | We avoid | We prefer |
|---|---|---|
| Theme reset! | 主题重置！ | 主题已重置。 |
| Importing contacts complete! | 导入联系人完成！ | 导入联系人已完成。 |
| You have %d new emails! | 您有 %d 封新邮件！ | 您有 %d 封新邮件。 |
Parentheses
• Use Chinese style parentheses（）if the texts surrounded by the parentheses include Chinese characters. There is no space between the Chinese parentheses and the texts outside them.
• English style parentheses () should be used when texts surrounded by the parentheses are English words and/or numerals. A single-byte space is left between the English parentheses and the texts outside them.
| English | We avoid | We prefer |
|---|---|---|
| Please choose a display name to finish setting up your account (Other people will see this). | 请选择一个显示名称以完成账号设置(其他人也可看到)。 | 请选择一个显示名称以完成您的账号设置（其他人也可看到此名称）。 |
| We also support importing vCard (UTF-8). | 我们也支持导入vCard（UTF-8） | 我们同时支持导入 vCard (UTF-8)。 |
Comma
Do not place a comma before “and” and “or” when the conjunction is used to link two related terms.
| English | We avoid | We prefer |
|---|---|---|
| You can also add, delete, and edit them by clicking | 您也可通过点击加入、删除，和编辑它们 | 您也可通过对其进行点击来完成添加、删除和编辑操作 |
| Assign permissions to users, or groups | 指派权限给用户，或是组 | 指派权限给用户或组 |
Colon
• For general informational and marketing contents (eg. brochures, webpages, reports, blogs etc.), the double byte colon (：) is usually used. There is no space between the double byte colon and the subsequent characters.
Date: Old to new 日期：以旧到新
Quotation marks
Chinese style double quotation marks (“”) should be used in Simplified Chinese translations. Chinese single quotation marks (‘’) should be used within double quotation marks to indicate the quotation inside a quotation.
Ampersand (&)
Replace “&” with “和”, “与” unless it is part of a company/product name or a registered trademark.
Half-width & full-width space
• Use half-width space:
o Special symbols such as @, #, $, %, &, *, =, ~.
o Between Chinese characters and English characters
o When English characters appear in parentheses, but there should be a half-width space between the words before and after the brackets.
• Use full-width space:
o When Chinese characters appear in parentheses
o Within the documents, such as comma (，) or (、), period (。), colon (：), question mark (？), quotation marks (“”)…
Others
Please follow the standard translation practice for China to translate other common punctuation signs: question mark, exclamatory mark, ellipses, dashes and hyphens, book title mark, etc.
Spacing and non-breaking spaces
• Use non-breaking spaces to prevent improper division of elements such as product names, part numbers, numbers, dates, etc.
• When using currency symbols or units of measurement, include a non-breaking space between number and sign.
| English | Simplified Chinese |
|---|---|
| €5 | €[non-breaking space]5 |
| 1 GB | 1[non-breaking space]GB |
Numbers
• No need to replace the period that stands for the decimal point in American English with a comma in your translations.
3.75 3.75
• For numbers smaller than 1, always put a zero before the decimal comma.
.5 0.5
• The period in app/software version numbers remains unchanged.
Proton Mail v.3
• Time and date:
o Hours and minutes are separated by a colon. Use the 24 hour format to specify A.M. and P.M.
at 9:25 P.M 在 21:25
o For dates: 01/31/22 (mm/dd/yyyy) 2022 年 1 月 31 日
Currencies
• Do not convert USD ($) or EUR (€) amounts to any local currency.
• Place the USD or EUR code or the symbol €, $ after the number and separate it with a non-breaking space from the number.
• “额”is zh_CH and“額”is zh_TW: Never ever mixed these two languages
Amount of $30 金额 30 美元
Singular & plural
• If a generic English word is to be kept untranslated, please remove the plural “s” and capitalize the first letter of the word.
Select one or more cookies. 选择一个或多个 Cookie。
Units of measurement
• Use the metric system.
• Insert a non-breaking space between a number and the relevant unit.
• Convert imperial units into metric units.
6 feet 183 厘米
| Category | Measurement unit | Translation | Abbreviation |
|---|---|---|---|
| LINEAR | Kilometer Meter Centimeter Millimeter |
千米 米 厘米 毫米 |
km m cm mm |
| MASS | Ton Kilogram Pound |
吨 千克 磅 |
t kg lb |
| IMPERIAL | Inch Feet Mile Gallon |
英寸 英尺 英里 加仑 |
in ft mi gal |
| COMPUTING | Byte (B) Megabyte (MB) Gigabyte (GB) |
字节 兆字节 千兆字节 |
b mb G |
English/US terms
For users of both Chinese and American keyboards, all function keys with English names, such as Esc, Shift, Alt, Tab, Ctrl, Enter, Insert (Ins), Delete (Del), Home, End, Page Up, Page Down, Print Screen, Scroll Lock, Pause, Break, Num Lock, Caps Lock, and F1 to F12 should be kept in their original text. Only if small caps are used in the original text, they should be changed to normal capitals.
Foreign words
• The decision about the use of foreign words (keeping it in English) rather than an equivalent term in your language is based on how widespread the use of the word is. An English term might be recommended when its use has become very common.
• To find out how common a word is, you can use internet search engines. Search for the English word and for the corresponding translation in your language on your preferred search engine. The number of occurrences in each case will be an indication of how popular the use of each word is. If in doubt for an important term, ask Proton Localization team to make an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) check.
• Foreign words might be accompanied by quotation marks or italics when their use is not widely spread. However, English words that are widely accepted for use are kept as they are in the original but do not take the ending “s” in the plural case.
• When foreign words are common and well understood, they can be left in the source language. Where necessary, add an explanation in the target language.
• Avoid using too many anglicisms.
Localizing person names
• Localize fictitious person names used for explanatory purposes, choosing a name that is generic but not stereotypical.
Please enter your display name (e.g. 王大明 大明)
• Do not localize real persons’ names.
Bart Butler is a senior engineer at Proton Mail Bart Butler 是效力于 Proton Mail 的高级工程师。