Software UI Chinese: Buttons, Empty States, Errors, and Confirmation

Safety/editorial boundary: This article teaches UI language and localization judgment, not product legal compliance or accessibility certification.

UI Chinese is short because space is expensive

Chinese software UI is not just translated English squeezed into buttons. It has its own habits: two-character verbs, noun-heavy labels, compact status messages, and polite but efficient error prompts. Good UI Chinese answers five questions: what action, on what object, with what risk, in what current state, and what next step?

A learner who expects full sentences will overread. A product team that translates word-by-word from English will produce bloated Chinese.

Common UI labels

Buttons: verbs first

Button Chinese often uses bare verbs:

• 保存 — Save.
• 提交申请 — Submit application.
• 查看详情 — View details.
• 立即购买 — Buy now.
• 重新加载 — Reload.
• 去设置 — Go to settings.

The pattern 去 + verb/place is common for next-step buttons: 去登录, 去认证, 去添加, 去支付. It is conversational but compact. It does not need “please proceed to.”

Empty states

Empty states explain absence and often invite action:

• 暂无数据 — No data available for now.
• 暂无订单记录 — No order records yet.
• 你还没有添加收货地址 — You have not added a shipping address yet.
• 去添加 — Go add one.
• 暂无搜索结果，换个关键词试试 — No search results; try another keyword.

暂无 is common UI language: “temporarily none/no … yet.” It is neutral and short. 还没有 is more conversational. 未 is more formal: 未登录, 未认证, 未完成.

Error messages and next steps

A good Chinese error message often has state + reason + next step:

操作失败，网络连接异常，请检查网络后重试。

Annotation:

• 操作失败 = state/result.
• 网络连接异常 = reason/category.
• 请检查网络后重试 = next step.

Compare weak translationese:

该操作没有被成功地完成由于网络问题。

It is grammatical-ish but unnatural. Better:

网络异常，操作未完成，请稍后重试。

Confirmation language

Confirmation screens handle risk:

• 确定删除该记录吗？ — Confirm deletion?
• 删除后不可恢复。 — Cannot be restored after deletion.
• 是否提交审核？ — Submit for review?
• 提交后将无法修改。 — Cannot modify after submission.
• 确认退出登录？ — Confirm log out?

Chinese often uses 是否 in neutral system prompts. 确定……吗？ is direct and common. 不可恢复/无法撤销 are risk phrases.

Learner traps and repairs

Practice protocol

Take ten English UI strings and force each into one of four types: action, state, error, confirmation. Translate type first, not words first. For each string, ask: does the Chinese need a verb, noun label, warning, or next step?

Upgrade and remediation layer

Software UI Chinese should be upgraded with microcopy diagnostics. The core issue is not vocabulary difficulty; it is context density. A two-character button such as 删除 may mean delete a file, delete a message, remove an item from a list, or cancel a saved draft. The reader must recover the object from the screen state.

Before/after repair:

删除后无法恢复，是否继续？

Weak reading: “After delete cannot recover, whether continue?” Better reading: “This cannot be restored after deletion. Continue?” The UI translation should be short; the learning explanation can be longer.

Add more treatment of 暂无. It often means “currently no…” not “temporarily without” in a literal way. 暂无数据, 暂无评论, 暂无记录 are empty-state labels, not error messages.

Add a contrast between 保存 and 提交. 保存 often stores a draft or settings; 提交 sends the form/application for processing. In a learner tool, confusing these two is a high-priority error because it changes the implied workflow.

Tool upgrade: the UI component library should require context slots: component type, object, risk level, next step, and tone. It should also include character-count variants: full explanatory Chinese for learning, concise production Chinese for UI, and English gloss.

Publication QA: avoid over-prescribing one translation for every product context. A button labeled 确定 may be “OK,” “Confirm,” “Yes,” or “Done” depending on the flow.

Build a Chinese UI component library with buttons, empty states, errors, confirmations, tooltips, and status chips. Include character-count warnings and examples of overlong translationese.