Shipping to a Chinese character address

[reallynicestamps]

Had a  nice sale to China today, but I wanted to track it, rather than ship untracked via LetterPost as usual.

Was horrified by cost, naturally.

Normally I would add most of the postage as stamps purchased at a discount, but the buyer's address was in Chinese.

Put my cheapskate Aberdonian* heritage to work.

Cut and pasted Chinese character address into Google Translate.

Whoo Hoo!

Cut and pasted Chinese address and printed it out to tape on my package. Wrote Roman alphabet address on package for Canada Post.

Added $35 worth of stamps and got label and tracking at post office.

Tah Daaah!

I love Google Translate.

*Other Scots tell those "thrifty" jokes about those of us from Aberdeen.

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

@reallynicestamps 

Which brings up the recent post of "addressing", sorry, couldn't resist the pun and eBay being a more accountable when it comes confirming addresses and the format because requirements can and do vary country to country. They may not be the same as USA or Canada and could cause either delays or non-delivery. 2 sites below i refer to when I'm just not sure.

https://www.informatica.com/ca/products/data-quality/data-as-a-service/address-verification/address-...

https://www.bitboost.com/ref/international-address-formats.html

https://www.bitboost.com/ref/international-address-formats.html#Formats

-Lotz

[ricarmic]

I have before cut and pasted the non english address into the relevant boxes on the customs online form.

My recollection is that they worked ok (and I remember doing it for Chinese), however I recently did that for a buyer from Russia, and it converted the Russian cryllic into ???? ???? ?? ???? ??? when it was scanned at the PO, so I had to tape the Russian over top of that. 

Fortunately it was only his name that was in Russian, the rest of the address was in "english" characters.

So I am not sure it is still a possibility to just cut and paste non english stuff in, but at one time it was and it worked. 

[reallynicestamps]

FWIW - Cyrillic and Chinese are accepted by the UPU.

I would guess that the Post Office is smart enough that if the label says RUSSIA or CHINA they could get the item on the right plane and once it lands it's not Canada Post's problem.

Fun fact-- English was not one of the UPU languages from its founding in 1874 until 1994.

[reallynicestamps]

Further note--

The postal outlet worker was confused for a second about the Chinese character address.

Apparently his computer does not have a Chinese keyboard.

Who would have thought it?