Chinese Asylum Evidence Translation for UK Claims and Appeals

First-tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) Rule 12(5)(b) calls for an English translation when a document is not in English. That wording does not specify a professional qualification. I provide named, signed certification as an accountable method: source pages listed, terminology checked across the file and uncertainties recorded. Your representative decides scope and submission; I do not assess the merits of the claim or authenticate the evidence.

An asylum bundle is never one document. A typical file that reaches me mixes:

• identity papers — 居民身份证 (resident identity card), 户口簿 (household register), passport pages, 出生医学证明
• police and court material — 传唤证 (summons), 拘留通知书 (detention notice), 取保候审决定书 (release on bail pending trial), 行政处罚决定书 (administrative penalty decision), judgments and indictments
• medical evidence — 诊断证明书 (diagnosis certificate), 出院小结 (discharge summary), handwritten 病历 notes, injury photographs with Chinese captions
• letters of support from a church, an employer, a village committee or a neighbour
• family planning papers, sterilisation certificates and social maintenance fee receipts
• the applicant’s own statement, plus WeChat threads, screenshots and phone messages

The most important thing I do with this material is refuse to improve it. A summons that is vague in Chinese stays vague in English. A handwritten letter that reads awkwardly keeps its awkwardness. A stamp that is half-legible is marked as illegible rather than guessed at, and a passage I cannot read is flagged, not filled in. Credibility findings have turned on the wording of a single document, and a translator who tidies the source hands the other side an argument that the document is not what it claims to be.

Vocabulary carries real weight in these cases. Chinese law separates 行政拘留 (administrative detention) from 刑事拘留 (criminal detention), and both from the historical 劳动教养 (re-education through labour) and 收容教育. 取保候审 is release on bail pending trial, not parole. 传唤 is a summons to attend; 拘传 is compulsory attendance. Collapsing any of these into “detained by the police” removes precisely the detail that establishes what happened to someone. Religious terminology needs the same care — 家庭教会 (house church), the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, and the group labels that appear in official Chinese documents — which I render consistently and annotate where the Chinese label is itself a contested characterisation.

Consistency across the bundle is the other half of the work. One spelling of a person’s name, one village, one police station and one date convention across forty documents, so a caseworker or a judge reading them in sequence sees a single story rather than several. I build a glossary for each case, mirror the spelling already used on Home Office correspondence or an ARC card rather than inventing a fresh romanisation, and keep the layout close enough to the original that anyone can hold the two side by side. Where a deadline is tight, my note on how long certified Chinese translation takes gives realistic timescales for larger bundles.

These are sensitive papers about people at risk, and they are handled accordingly: not shared, not used as samples, not passed on. Where a document is missing a page, or is plainly a photograph of a photograph, I say so rather than working around it quietly.

For a quote, send the whole bundle at once with a note of the deadline, the spelling of the applicant’s name as it appears on Home Office correspondence, and who the translation is for. I will tell you which documents need full certified translation and which are duplicates you should not be paying for, then confirm the page count and price before starting.