月租卡 translation

[Pegasus]

Hello everyone, 

 

The context is mobile/cell phones. How would you translate 月租卡? I know literally, it translates to Month Rent Card, but the literal translation is a poor translation. I am trying to find something that is equivalent to this in English.

 

I'm from the U.S. and here we have "pre-paid" plans and "post-paid" plans for our cell phone service. Our "pre-paid" cell phone service is sometimes called "pay as you go". Our "post-paid" plans are sometimes called "traditional, monthly billed service", "monthly plans", or "contract plans". "Contract plans" I suppose additionally implies a term contract like one-year or two-years. 

 

Is there anyone here who can explain how cell phone service works in China or Hong Kong or Taiwan? I think 月租卡 refers to some type of "post-paid" service, but what exactly is a 月租卡? And, what you would call 月租卡 in English? 

 

Thank you!

 

Cheers, 

Pegasus 

[Pearl L Q]

月租卡You make a contract with the cell service  company . There are different 月租 which supply different service packages. You could have free text message and communication , such as 100 text messages are free, if the text messages are overnumber, you should pay the extral charges.

[abcdefg]

Is there anyone here who can explain how cell phone service works in China or Hong Kong or Taiwan?

 

My cellphone service here in Mainland China has always been prepaid, even though I have a contract. In other words, I must pay in advance for anything I want to use, be it phone calls, text messages, internet data, and so on.

 

The service I've had temporarily in Taiwan and Hong Kong as a tourist has also always been prepaid.

 

But I don't really know if this is the kind of service about which you are inquiring or not. Phone service is pretty complex, with lots of wrinkles and quite a few different service plans, many with "catchy" and non-descriptive names.

 

Also there are always "special deals" 活动 that bundle things in a way that makes the service look attractive to the consumer. These are designed by marketing departments.

 

Would caution you not to put too much stock in a name.  月租卡 might easily be misleading even with the very best of translations. It's a bit like trying to figure out what "Whopper" means in a fast food joint just by using Webster's English Dictionary. (I realize you've probably discovered that on your own.)

[Pearl L Q]

Yes, the service is prepaid and it has another name 话费套餐. 

[Pegasus]

 謝謝你們 Thank you for your replies.

 

In the context of mobile/cell phone plans, my research has led me to interpret 月租 (yuèzū) to refer to the type of plans where you usually have a one or two year contract and where you are billed for the previous month's incurred mobile phone usage (i.e., in-network voice calls, out-of-network voice calls, land-line domestic voice calls, international voice calls, SMS text messages sent, MMS text message sent, Internet data used, etc...).  For example, say you have made calls on your cell phone totalling 500 minutes of in-network talk time, made calls totalling 200 minutes of out-of-network talk time, sent 300 SMS text messages, and used 1.5 GB of Internet data from your mobile phone all in the month of January. Then you would receive a billing statement at the beginning of February billing you for all of that usage in January at the rates in accordance with the plan you signed up for. 

 

It seems that this is in contrast to the 預付 (yùfù) type of mobile phone plans. In the mobile phone plan context, 預付 refers to what we might call a pre-paid plan (also known as a pay-as-you-go plan). In this type of plan, you have to fill your account with an amount of money before you can use your phone. After you've put money into your account, then the money is deducted from your account as you use your phone at the time you use your phone. So, for example, if you have $50 in your account and if a voice call is $0.20 per minute according to your pre-paid plan, then when you make a phone call from your phone, $0.20 is taken out of your account each minute during your phone call. If the phone call was 5 minutes long, then by the end of the phone call, $1.00 should have been taken out of your account leaving you with $49 remaining in your account. 

 

I also learned about a card called a 儲值卡 (chúzhíkǎ or chǔzhíkǎ). In the context of pre-paid mobile phone plans (aka pay-as-you-go mobile phone plans), it appears you can purchase a 儲值卡 from the market to refill (aka top up) your pre-paid account. In the context of pre-paid (or pay-as-you-go) mobile phone plans, we might call this a re-fill card or a top-up card in English. Once you buy the 儲值卡, you scratch a part of the card to reveal a code, and then you follow the instructions on the card and use the code to refill the pre-paid account in the amount of the card you purchased. For example, if you buy a $50 儲值卡, then you would follow the instructions on that 儲值卡 to add $50 to your pre-paid (or pay-as-you-go) account.

 

Cheers,

Pegasus