  Global e-retailing continues to gain in popularity, but little attention is
being paid to the role of translation. This paper proposes a study
investigating whether improving translated information quality of product
descriptions increases the customers' information satisfaction, while reducing
the perceived product risk, which in turn improves their intention to use an
online shopping website. To manipulate translation quality, two translation
methods are used: machine and crowdsourced. The chosen translation written
language pair is from English to Simplified Chinese, as these are the official
languages of world's two largest economies (U.S.A and China respectively) that
also have large e-tailing markets. A model based on an integration of two
theories, DeLone & McLean's Information Systems Success Model, and Perceived
Risk Theory, has been developed for testing the impact of translated
information quality. The moderating effect of translation method and
e-retailer's brand influencing customers' tolerance of imperfect translation is
also considered.
