Writer Never mind the dicey political gulf between Taiwan and China.
Taiwan, with its closer tech ties to the United States forged through a generation of U.S.-trained engineers, often falls back on English for tech terms. So does Hong Kong. Doug Tsui, a Hong Kong-born consultant based in Sunnyvale, notes that whether you're talking tech in Strasbourg or Shanghai, English is the common tongue. China is using English too, but in its own way. Mandarin speakers alternately laugh and groan over the different tech terms, not to mention the difficulty of translating tech company names that sound cool in English.