Chinese Bank Statement Translation for UK Visitor and Spouse Visas

Visitor evidence should show the funds available and their source. For spouse-visa cash savings, Appendix FM-SE normally requires statements covering the preceding 6 months, subject to its specified exceptions. Electronic statements need either a bank letter on headed paper confirming authenticity or the issuing bank’s stamp on every page. See Appendix FM-SE. Chinese Student visa applicants usually benefit from differential evidence arrangements and do not submit proof of funds unless asked; the financial conditions still apply (Student visa money guidance).

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:

• 交易日期 / 交易时间 — transaction date, sometimes split into separate date and time columns, and occasionally a second “value date” column alongside it.
• 摘要 or 交易类型 — a terse transaction note such as 代发工资, 网上转账, 消费, 跨行汇入 or 结息, which has to be glossed the same way every time it appears.
• 借方发生额 / 贷方发生额, or 收入 / 支出 — money out and money in. Which column means which is not consistent between banks, so it gets read from the statement rather than assumed.
• 余额 — the running balance after each entry, the figure a caseworker will check line by line.
• 对方户名 / 对方账号 / 交易网点 — counterparty name, counterparty account (often partly masked with asterisks) and the branch or channel that processed the entry.

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 can be completed by your deadline — I have written more about realistic turnaround times for certified Chinese translation in the UK.

For related spouse-visa evidence, see marriage certificate translation and hukou translation。