translating: Eng. names for Chin. gov positions

[Southernjohn]

Hi everyone- happy new year.

I am posting here (hope it is in the right sub-forum) because I just started a part-time translating job here in the mainland in the south.I thought I would have no problems (haha) but something that is already giving me a headache is the proper English name for a given government/civil office. I know google is a translator's best friend and I have already scored some successes. But I am just wondering if there is a good reference (online or in print) for English names of Chinese government positions.

thanks a lot.

southerjohn

[skylee]

Found this via google, which might be helpful -> http://english.gov.cn/

[roddy]

Generally what I do is . . .

1) Plug the entire Chinese name into Google and see if there's an 'official' site. If there is, visit it and see if you can spot a link to an English version which will have a translation of the name, or if it's on the page somewhere - they quite often hide it in animated banners though, the sneaky &^%$^%$s. Oh, and don't get excited when you see an English link. You aren't allowed to get excited till you see an English link, click on it, and get a page. The link often just signifies a vague intention of having an English language version at some point in the semi-distant future. Or maybe it's just meant to be a statement of advocacy and support, like "Freedom"

2) Search for the Chinese name, plus something I'm reasonably sure will be in the English - ie if I'm lucky enough to be looking for 中国国家地质实验测试中心, search for "中国国家地质实验测试中心" + center and see if I can come up with a parallel text somewhere.

3) Search for related terms if I know them in English. If I know there's an official with some government office named Zhang Fubai, search for that in pinyin - you may find something mentioning him and his office in English.

4) Think up plausible English translations of my own and search to see if any of them pop up.

5) Use one of aforementioned plausible English translations.

Half the problem is that a Chinese organization may well have it's 'official' translation - but that does not mean that anyone else uses it, or that it's any good.

There's also a species of sentence that goes something like "Zhang Changju, vice head of the Information Advancement Office of the Internet Bureau of the Network Technology Department of the Ministry of Information Industry, revealed that . . ." If you get sentences like that you are better off translating it as "Zhang Changju, an MII official, revealed . . ." if you can get away with it.

As for one-stop online or printed resources: I've found nothing decent online once you get below ministry level, and anything at ministry level is easy enough to find anyway. Printed resources I'm sure you can find, but I'd be dubious about them being up to date and only slightly less dubious about them being right. The trouble is that when you are trying to translate something, you really need a dual-language example out there so you can nail it with a Chinese language source. You won't find the English language pages unless you know where to look or know what the English is already.

[Gulao]

Try searching for the terms in Chinese wikipedia, then hitting up the corresponding English article. It's not garunteed to work as the Chinese wikipedia doesn't even have a tenth of the English wikipedia's articles, but you can find a lot of very good translations. It works best for terms that won't necessarily show up on sites with ready English translations, such as 马甲.