Chinese for Business: Essential Language Skills for Meetings and Presentations

For meetings and presentations in Chinese, important language skills and phrases revolve around formal greetings, introducing topics, managing the flow of the meeting, asking questions, and concluding the session. Using polite and clear expressions is key to effective communication in professional settings.

Key Chinese Phrases for Meetings and Presentations

• Greetings and starting the meeting:

  • 大家好，欢迎参加今天的会议。 (Dàjiā hǎo, huānyíng cānjiā jīntiān de huìyì.) — “Hello everyone, welcome to today’s meeting.”
  • 我们开始今天的讨论。 (Wǒmen kāishǐ jīntiān de tǎolùn.) — “Let’s start today’s discussion.”

• Introducing yourself or others:

  • 我叫…，是…部门的。 (Wǒ jiào…, shì… bùmén de.) — “My name is…, and I am from the … department.”
  • 这是我的同事…，他/她负责…。 (Zhè shì wǒ de tóngshì…, tā fùzé…) — “This is my colleague…, who is responsible for…”

• Presenting information:

  • 接下来，我将介绍…。 (Jiē xiàlái, wǒ jiāng jièshào…) — “Next, I will introduce…”
  • 根据我们的数据…。 (Gēnjù wǒmen de shùjù…) — “According to our data…”

• Managing discussion:

  • 请大家发表意见。 (Qǐng dàjiā fābiǎo yìjiàn.) — “Please share your opinions.”
  • 我们需要解决以下几个问题。 (Wǒmen xūyào jiějué yǐxià jǐ gè wèntí.) — “We need to resolve the following issues.”

• Asking for clarification:

  • 请问你的意思是…? (Qǐngwèn nǐ de yìsi shì…?) — “May I ask, do you mean…?”
  • 你能详细说明一下吗？ (Nǐ néng xiángxì shuōmíng yíxià ma?) — “Could you explain in more detail?”

• Concluding the meeting:

  • 感谢大家的参与。 (Gǎnxiè dàjiā de cānyù.) — “Thank you all for your participation.”
  • 会议到此结束。 (Huìyì dào cǐ jiéshù.) — “The meeting is now concluded.”

Tips for Presentations in Chinese

• Speak clearly and at a moderate pace.
• Use simple and formal language appropriate for business.
• Incorporate visual aids such as slides with Chinese text and numbers.
• Practice key phrases for transitions and summarizing points.

This provides a foundational set of expressions and strategies for conducting meetings and presentations in Chinese effectively and professionally. If needed, more specialized vocabulary or phrases for particular industries or types of meetings can be provided.

References

• Guidelines for Investigation and Management of Close Contacts of COVID-19 Cases

• Regional Rabies Scientific Conference, Wuhan, China, 16-17 April 2015 : Programme and Wrap-Up session

• ISCRAM-CHINA 2008 Meeting Report

• Update on the INTEnsive ambulance-delivered blood pressure Reduction in hyper-ACute stroke Trial (INTERACT4): progress and baseline features in 2053 participants

• How to present L2 Chinese words effectively for learning: Exploring learning outcomes and learner perceptions

• Cultural and Social Interpretation of Chinese Addressing Strategies.

• Well-received Chinese rhetorical strategies as identified in the public speeches and reports by Chinese leaders

• Language practice in the multilingual workplace: A Confucius Institute in Macau

• What You Need to Know about Chinese for Chinese Language Processing

• Advancing Speech Translation: A Corpus of Mandarin-English Conversational Telephone Speech

• Facilitating Global Team Meetings Between Language-Based Subgroups: When and How Can Machine Translation Help?

• Understanding perspective-taking in multiparty conversations: insights from Mandarin nouns

• From English to Chinese, Japanese, and Russian: extending research visibility with language translations of a conference slide presentation

• COVID-19-Combating English with Chinese Characteristics in the CAT’s Translations

• The Approach to the Chinese Diplomatic Discourse

• The construction of “Taishang zuo-zhe zhuxituan” in mandarin: a Cardiff grammar approach

• Chinese English in as lingua franca in global business setting: A case study of ongoing emails of a foreign company in China

• The Chinese Educational Idioms That the Chinese Shall Live By

• A report on the global conference on research and application of Chinese herbal medicine-derived extracellular vesicle-like particles (2024): utilizing medicinal plant-derived extracellular vesicles to advance global pharmaceutical development

• A Corpus-Based Investigation of Extra-Textual, Connective, and Emphasizing Additions in English-Chinese Conference Interpreting