The art and science of not letting words get in the way

Language localisation is more than just translating training manuals and how-to guides - it's studying the target culture to adapt products to the needs of a market. It's seen, perhaps unfairly, as an unsexy but essential industry that never makes the list of most creative or fascinating companies. But CSOFT broke that mould in 2012 by being named a "powerful tech disruptor" - a company that revolutionises its industry, technology in this case, so much that it brings an end to a previous standard. It also earned its CEO, Shunee Yee, a mention by CNN Money alongside such titans as PayPal founder Peter Thiel and Youku CEO Victor Koo. Yee is petite, but her poise wields the kind of charm that both disarms and engages. Her office is a sprawling establishment, - complete with sketches by local artists, classical Chinese furniture, and even a pool table - in the heart of Beijing's business district.

I was born and grew up in Nanjing , capital of Jiangsu . I wanted to be a secretary when I graduated. I got a call from a man who mentioned localisation, which I had to look it up in the dictionary. But I got into the industry when it was still serving only overseas software companies. I've learnt a lot since then. I don't come from a software engineering background. When you localise a product, you take care of the screenshots, testing and compiling, and you take care of more than the language itself. You are taking care of date and time, something very specific to that country. It's a very fast industry; I went through many mergers and acquisitions. In my last job, I was on a mission of spinning out one of the subsidiaries working on a joint venture between Kia, the South Korean automaker, and Yueda. The deal failed, and at the same time I was having my first baby, so it was the perfect opportunity to start CSOFT.

Whether companies are selling products worldwide, or opening a new factory, there is an intersection between technology transfer and language. This is a new era of global communications; it's about excelling in global trade. Traditionally all those global communications companies are centred in the US or Europe. We chose China, strategically, to be headquartered. We know it's challenging, because of intellectual property and other issues. We are a new challenger, like being the first generation of global communications companies. Most Fortune 500 companies have products released worldwide, but in the last couple of years, we've seen a new rise in Chinese companies going global. That's where we saw a potential for growth. In our early days, we also saw that China had a very large talent pool that we could tap. We decided not to join the price war. I remember the only big Chinese company we served in the early days; they were selling their products in Japan. They came to us and asked: "This is just translation, why is it so expensive?" We said we don't do just penny translations over the table; we want to localise your products. So they left and came back a few months later, and paid us the exact price we asked for. The demand for localisation has grown so quickly in the past few years. We serve Huawei, Beijing Automotive and a dozen large local companies here.