Go international: why we are learning Chinese

Servus in Styria, hello in the rest of the world, 你好 in China. Three greetings — and the essence of our go-international strategy: openness to languages.

QmiSoft is at home in Birkfeld, Austria. Our software, however, is used wherever our customers work. That is why this website speaks three languages — German, English and Chinese — and why we have taken the next step: we are studying Chinese.

Software starts with understanding

In our process, the second step is called Study — with experience. Before a single line of code is written, we need to understand how a business really works: its requirements, its constraints, its people.

Understanding is always also a question of language. Requirements get lost in translation, datasheets are misread, nuances disappear. Whoever speaks the customer’s language — even just a little — asks better questions and hears the answers more precisely.

Why Chinese?

China is one of the greatest markets in the world, and a large part of today’s hardware, electronics and industrial automation is designed or built there. For a company like ours, which connects software, IoT and automation, that matters every day:

• Datasheets and standards. Many components come with Chinese documentation, and China has its own national standards (GB standards). Reading them directly is faster and safer than guessing.
• Partners and suppliers. European companies working with Chinese partners need someone who can bridge not only the technology but also the communication.
• The other direction. Chinese companies entering Europe need partners who know European requirements such as the GDPR and the EU AI Act.

Hong Kong plays a special role here. Through our membership in AI Tinkerers, we are connected to a community whose Hong Kong chapter sees itself as a bridge between East and West — with meetups in English and demos welcome in Cantonese and Mandarin.

How we learn

We are learners, not native speakers — and we say so openly. We learn step by step:

1. Everyday and business language for respectful, clear communication.
2. Technical vocabulary for software, automation and project work.
3. Reading technical documents such as datasheets and specifications.
4. Culture and business etiquette, because good cooperation is more than grammar.

Our Chinese web pages are a start. They were created with machine assistance, and we keep improving them. If you are a native speaker and spot something to improve: please write to us — 欢迎指正!

What this means for our customers

For you, our go-international strategy means one thing above all: fewer misunderstandings on the way from your request to the solution — whether your project, your partners or your markets are in Europe or in Asia.

学无止境 — learning never ends. We are looking forward to it.