Contracts To And From Mandarin

[Jimmy Bones]

Hey guys.

First of all, I'm new here, so please don't be too harsh on me if this has been touched upon before.

I am in the process of getting a job where a portion of my responsibilities will be translating contracts and correspondance to and from Chinese. It's been a couple years since I was in a job where I got to use my language skills in any capacity, and I got a test for the interviewer to look over, basically a contract in English and another in Mandarin, and they're both driving me nuts.

There is a lot of formatting that is mildly confusing, and the industry specific jargon (especially in the English to Chinese portion) is driving me nuts.

Is there anywhere I can go where I can get a brief overview of contract formatting and nomenclature? My old teacher recommended finding a foreign trade dictionary, but I'm kinda broke till I get the job.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

[imron]

A google search for 合同范本 should provide plenty of example contracts in Mandarin. Likewise you can do similar search in English. Doing that won't provide you with translations, but will let you see plenty of relevant language.

[Lugubert]

My first thought, as it involves contracts: Have you thoroughly investigated if you yourself will be held financially responsible for any errors, or misunderstandings arising from your output, or is there some kind of professional insurance you can get as an employee? We freelancers or translators in self-owned companies almost by definition insure ourselves.

If you for example translate a contract for the building of a huge something, and there's a mistake in the contract, like on what kind of material should be used, the costs for correction may run into millions. Or on which additives are allowed in diary products...

[Xiwang]

For the English-language side of contracts, there are many form books available that will give you examples of sample agreements and sample clauses. However, they are fairly expensive so you should try to see if you can gain access to a local law library. (The good thing is that sometimes a CD is included with the book.) FindLaw.com also has many sample contracts (e.g., joint venture agreements, employment contracts, licensing agreements) gathered from public sources, such as corporate filings with the United States SEC:

http://forms.findlaw.com/

I also have concerns about your liability issues. If you are just translating in order to give your client an idea of what the contract says in the other language, that's one thing. However, if you're translating contracts that will be signed in the translated language without review and editing by a qualified native-speaking lawyer, that's very dangerous.

After a contract is signed, the parties usually don't bother looking at it again until something starts going wrong. At that point, the lawyers who drafted the document start praying that the problem (no matter how odd or previously unpredictable) was somehow dealt with in the contract. That's why I lose sleep when I draft contracts. The choice of words, syntax, or even punctuation can unexpectedly affect the meaning of a contract.

At the least, if there will be dual language versions of contracts going back and forth between the parties (even if one version is not signed), you should make sure that there is a clause stating which language will govern so as to prevent the possibility of conflict between the two versions. The governing version should especially be well vetted by a lawyer.

There are many small legal and business dictionaries. However, at some point, you're probably going to have to spring for at least a couple of large specialized Chinese/English dictionaries. I've found them in large Chinese bookstores, such as the Zhongguancun Book Building in Beijing's Haidian District. However, even by Western standards, some of these dictionaries are moderately expensive.

Edited November 11, 2009 at 02:20 PM by Xiwang

[Lugubert]

Xiwang, thanks for eloquently expansing my points. I'd stress even more the lawyers thing. When the least in doubt, I always include a comment that sufficiently competent people should have a go at the details. In my experience, customers tend to appreciate such pieces of advice, rather than think that you're, say, incompetent in the respective area.

[Jimmy Bones]

Thanks for the advice guys.

Turns out that one of my main contacts will be a bilingual lawyer in Hong Kong, he actually will be assisting me with a lot of it, so I'm covered there.

Now I just need to find some scientific terms in the oceanographic and maritime fields.