legal jobs

[dan ni er]

Hi all

This may be a long shot, but wondering if there's anyone out there who works in either a law firm or a top accountancy firm in China who could answer the following simple question: is there an official english version of the main legislation in china or do the firms generally translate it in inhouse/use specialist company for their western employees?

Cheers - your help is appreciated

[gato]

So far as I know, the Chinese government does not provide official translation of its laws and regulations. People generally rely on privately done translations, such as the ones available from lawinfochina, a commercial offshoot of the law school of Beijing University:

http://www.lawinfochina.com/index.asp

Are you looking for a translation job?

[dan ni er]

Gato - thanks for your reply.

No, I'm not looking for a tranlation job. In fact, I would like to find a position in china as a lawyer (with a focus on tax) and therefore am after some background info. I had a feeling that there wouldn't be an official english copy in case there was a translation discrepancy.

I assume the big firms must pay specialist companies, similar to Lawinfochina, to translate the legislation for them. Anyone able to confirm this?

Cheers

[imron]

That, and many have lawyers with great Chinese and can therefore read the originals.

[gato]

What imron said. Translation involves interpretation, and with the law it's often better to have the original than someone else's interpretation.

But you seem to have something else in mind other than just a simple legal translation question.

[dan ni er]

I agree - it's of course always better to be able to to understand the original. However, your Chinese needs to be pretty good to be able to understand the law in Chinese. Therefore, I assume that those employees who perhaps do not have perfect Chinese, they rely on a translated version in English?

[gato]

They either rely on translations or on others who can read the original. If we are talking about people working in law in China, most will be able to read the Chinese original. Those who can't are usually senior-level employees.

[dan ni er]

thanks Gato - do you work as a lawyer in china? If so, could I contact you with some additional questions?

[imron]

However, your Chinese needs to be pretty good to be able to understand the law in Chinese

Actually, once you've learnt the appropriate vocabulary it's not that difficult, at least not more so than reading a newspaper article or a novel. In many cases it's actually easier, because the law tries to state things clearly and unambiguously. Obviously it doesn't always manage to do this, but it does try.

[simonlaing]

Hi Dan ni er,

I heard that the Chinese government passed a law requiring all foreign copywright inventions and products to be translated into chinese and patented in China in order to be sued under chinese law. So this gives a lot of opportuinities for translators with law backgrounds. I am about to start work at a fairly large stable translation company in Nanjing called Sunyu translation. www.sunyu.com. You can try applying there they may give you art time or contract work to test you first before offering a full time translator position.

You may want to look at the intellectual property law espicially as the US case is making it a hot topic for the Chinese government.

have fun,

Simon:)

[roddy]

You can get hold of 中英对照 versions of lots of laws. While they won't have any legal standing, they're probably as close as a non-Chinese reader is going to get to an 'official' version and if you need to read this stuff they'd probably be a good way to acquire the Chinese vocab while doing so.