Welcome to East-West-Connect

Welcome to East-West-Connect.com.  This blog will be a place for me (Tait) to contribute my insights, ideas and ramblings.
 
I'm involved in so many projects that anybody that asks me the simple question "what do you do" often ends up confused to say the least.  So, I thought about it a little and realized this: most of what I do involves "connecting" Chinese people and English-speaking people, and that's what East-West-Connect.com will be about.  My interests, projects and ideas for the future give us an indication of what this blog will be about:

• Chinese-English translation – I translate everything from contracts to news articles to video games.
• Negotiation, interpretation, cross-cultural consulting – I have experience facilitating business between Chinese businesses and their Canadian and American partners. This doesn’t only include performing Chinese-English interpretation at business meetings but also includes giving advice on cross-cultural issues and helping resolve disputes.
• China travel – I founded synotrip.com, which is an English-language travel website about China that allows foreign travellers to directly connect with independent tour guides in China.
• Cross-cultural online marketing – I have been gearing up a new venture, NanjingMarketingGroup.com. The goal is to aid existing English-language websites expand their online presence to reach the massive Chinese-reading internet population. In this, I work with a variety of other people including translators, online marketing specialists, web developers, etc.
• Real estate – Not something I’ve been involved in yet, but I would love to help facilitate real-estate deals between China and Canada (or even China and USA). One idea would be running real-estate “tours” in partnership with realtors in Canada.
• Energy – Hey, I live in Alberta – how can I not have some interest in the energy industry? In 2008, I worked in sales for Albertaoilmagazine.com and its sister magazine Canadaoilmagazine.com, which was to be a Chinese-language magazine on the Canadian energy industry distributed in China. Unfortunately, for reasons out of my control, Canada Oil Magazine was shut down before it could launch.
• Further Chinese-English study. Whether you want to learn how to say “hello” or want to have an in-depth discussion on localizing an advertisement, language study never ends. I always keep a language-partner and I’ll probably start a new Chinese-English study group in Edmonton pretty soon.

Well, that’s all I can think of off the top of my head. Let’s see where this takes us…

About the author

Tait Lawton is an online marketer focused on the Chinese market. He is the founder of Nanjing Marketing Group, a company that provides Chinese-language Internet marketing services to Western clients. Tait has a Bachelor of Commerce degree from University of Alberta.
 
You can follow him on Twitter or check out the other contact methods here.