When it comes to promoting your business in both Chinese and English, it's a simple case of numbers.
If you're setting up a website, for example, and it costs $2,000 to design in Chinese and another $1,000 for an English version, any business owner would want to see a return from both sectors. But when 90 per cent and up of their customers are Asian and speak Chinese as their first language, it's understandable why few go the extra mile for both tongues.
And that's even before you weigh in the costs of having signs in two languages and hiring multi-lingual staff - all while the vast majority of their patrons use one language.
"Many of our customers are from mainland China and almost all their customers speak Chinese," said the owner of a web design company on No.3 and Cambie roads, who asked not to be named for fear of offending anyone in the Chinese community.
"Many times they think twice about having an English version (of their site) because of the extra cost."
But it's not just the prohibitive costs associated with doing business in both Chinese and English which is holding mainland Chinese, and some other Asian, business owners back from going bilingual.
"Many small business owners can't speak English very well, so they can't communicate properly with any English-speaking customers that might come in if they advertised in English," explained the web designer.
"And if there was a communication problem in terms of the product itself and promises made, that could be a major problem."
acampbell@richmond-news.com
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