It might be the savior of every expat struggling to make it past the four tones of ma in Mandarin: Lesson 1.

A new telephone service in Shanghai is offering hapless, tongue-tied expats a speed-dial, on-the-hoof translation service.

China Helpline (www.chinahelpline.com) opened six months ago in Shanghai and is available nationwide.

Frustrated expats fed up with talking louder in their native language in the vain hope of being understood, pay 3 yuan (36 US cents) a minute to get to speak with a bilingual translator fluent in English and Chinese.

Customers sign up for subscription and pay their bills via the company's website.

"You just pass the phone to the person you are having problems communicating with and we tell them what you want, or what they want from you," said CEO, Karen Zhou.

China Helpline was formed by Zhou, American Eric Moffett and Indian Manoj Dengla, both frequent travelers to China who were struck by the difficulty of overcoming the Chinese language barrier.

"Although one can hire a full time interpreter, doing so is expensive and inconvenient, especially when most language difficulties require a few minutes' assistance," said Shanghai-born Zhou.

People call to overcome business misunderstandings and overcome day-to-day problems, such at the hairdressers, the shop, dry-cleaners, bus stop and dentist.

The service is open seven days a week, from 7 am to 8 pm and the 10 translators in the call centre "handle many, many calls," said Zhou.

Misunderstandings, of course, often work two ways and, said the CEO, an increasing number of Chinese people are taking the initiative to call when they cannot understand their employers or customers.

The language of love can also be deciphered via the service. "We had a couple of phone calls from one person who couldn't communicate with his girlfriend," Zhou said.

(China Daily May 19, 2005)