I am a certified translator with the UK Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI) (Membership number 00024532), a Chartered Linguist with the Chartered Institute of Linguists (CIOL) (CIOL number: 72852), and a member of the American Translators Association (ATA) (Member number: 273323).
Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI) is the only UK-based membership association providing a professional home for practising translators, interpreters and all those involved in supplying language services.
CIOL (Chartered Institute of Linguists) is the UK’s Royal Charter body for language professionals and linguists.
RexTrans provides chinese certified translation services on GOV.UK for British nationals in China.
The American Translators Association (ATA) is the largest professional association of translators and interpreters in the United States with nearly 8,500 members in more than 100 countries.
If the Home Office, a UK lender, a solicitor running a source-of-funds check or a university admissions team has asked for your Chinese bank statement in English, what they want is a certified translation: a complete English version of every page you submit, signed and stamped by a qualified translator, with a signed statement of accuracy attached. That is what I produce. I am an ITI-certified Chinese-to-English translator and bank statements are the single document I handle most often. The rate is £30 per page (a page is 250 words), standard turnaround is 24 hours, and the finished translation arrives as a signed PDF by email.
Chinese statements reach me in two very different physical forms, and it changes how the job is set up. The first is the counter-printed 交易明细 or 银行流水 — light paper run off at a branch, with a red seal (usually a 业务专用章 or 查询专用章) pressed over the final line or across the join between pages, and sometimes a teller number inked in by hand. The second is the self-service e-statement exported from a mobile banking app or from online banking: a clean PDF, often with a verification code or QR panel in the footer, and frequently no red seal anywhere on it. ICBC, China Construction Bank, Bank of China, ABC, China Merchants Bank and Bank of Communications each set their columns out differently, but the same fields recur:
In UK practice these statements turn up as financial evidence for visa applications, as income and affordability evidence for mortgage and lending decisions, in anti-money-laundering and source-of-funds files when a property purchase is funded from China, in divorce and financial-remedy disclosure, in company and immigration files where an overseas director’s funds are in question, and occasionally in correspondence with HMRC. Every one of those readers is checking figures against other documents, so the translation has to be usable as a working table, not as prose.
The technical care sits in a few specific places. I do not convert RMB into pounds. A CNY figure stays a CNY figure, labelled as such — applying an exchange rate would change the evidence, and picking the rate is the caseworker’s job or your accountant’s, not the translator’s. The tabular layout is reproduced so the English page can be set beside the Chinese page and read across. Running balances are checked so the arithmetic in the English matches the original, digit grouping is kept in the UK convention without altering any value, and 元/角/分 wording in written-out amounts is rendered rather than rounded. Account holder and counterparty names are transliterated to match the spelling on your passport or on the Companies House record — tell me the spelling you use and I will follow it. Masked account numbers are copied character for character, asterisks included. Seals and verification panels are described in place, so the reader knows a red 业务专用章 sat there rather than finding a silent gap.
For a quote, email the statement as a PDF or a clear scan or photograph of every page, including any page that is blank on the reverse but carries a seal. Tell me the name spelling you need, who the translation is going to, and your deadline. I will confirm the page count and the price before starting, and if the file is long I will tell you honestly how much of it can be done overnight — I have written more about realistic turnaround times for certified Chinese translation in the UK. Notarisation can be arranged as an add-on, and revisions are included.
The Seal for Your Official Document
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Certified translations are often required for official purposes such as submissions to UK universities, courts, government agencies, and more.
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According to GOV.UK, your document must be certified by a professional or a person well-respected in your community (‘of good standing’). The person you ask should not be:
– Related to you
– Living at the same address
– In a relationship with you
In practice, UK authorities tend to recognize documents certified by authoritative translators, which can reduce the risk of rejection and save you time. You can minimize errors, omissions, or rejection by using a translator or translation company affiliated with a recognized professional body, such as the Association of Translation Companies (ATC), the Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI), or the Chartered Institute of Linguists (CIOL).
No, and you should be wary of any translator who does. A certified translation has to reproduce the document as it stands, so a balance of ¥486,320.55 stays ¥486,320.55, clearly marked as CNY. Applying an exchange rate would insert a figure that is not in the original, and the rate would be out of date by the time your application is read. If the receiving body needs a sterling equivalent, they apply their own published rate, or your accountant supplies a separate conversion schedule. I can add a translator’s note stating the currency if that helps the reader.
Only if the receiving body asked for the whole thing. Many requests cover a defined window, such as the most recent six months, and in that case only those pages are translated. What you must not do is translate part of a page, or drop pages from the middle of a sequence, because a certified translation has to be complete for whatever document it covers and a gap in a running balance looks like concealment. Send me everything, tell me which period is required, and I will quote on that.
The price starts from GBP30.
Our rates vary depending on the complexity and length of the document as well as the required turnaround time. We provide a free, no-obligation quote upon reviewing your document, ensuring that you know exactly what the translation will cost before proceeding.
The number of pages for certified translations is determined by the total word count of the document. A single page is considered to be 250 words or fewer, including any numerical data.
If a page exceeds 250 words, we will adjust the calculation accordingly based on the word count. At that point, you will need to request a quote from us.
Find out more about how pages are calculated.
The process begins with you sending us a scan or a clear photograph of your document. We then translate the document and provide a certification statement that attests to the accuracy of the translation and the qualifications of the translator. The certified translation is then stamped with our official seal and mailed to you.
That is a question for whoever is receiving it, not for the translation. Plenty of Chinese banks now issue e-statements with a verification code instead of a stamp, and I translate exactly what is on the page, including that code panel, noting that no seal appears. If the receiving body insists on a stamped counter-printed 银行流水, you will need to ask the branch for one before translation, since I cannot add authentication that the source document does not have.
Yes. Bank statements are evidence that gets cross-checked, so the translation is laid out as a table with the same columns in the same order, the same number of rows, and the running balance intact. A caseworker can put the Chinese and English side by side and follow a single transaction across both. Column headings such as 借方发生额 and 贷方发生额 are translated according to how that particular bank uses them, and any transaction code repeated through the statement is glossed consistently from first line to last.
If you still have questions that are not covered here, feel free to reach out to me directly.