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.
A Chinese-language contract that a UK solicitor, tribunal, lender or counterparty has to act on needs a certified English translation — the full agreement, schedules and signature page rendered into English and accompanied by a signed statement of accuracy from a qualified translator. I do this work as an ITI-certified Chinese-to-English translator, at £30 per page (250 words per page), with 24-hour standard turnaround on short agreements and a signed PDF delivered by email. Longer commercial contracts are quoted with a realistic date rather than an optimistic one.
The agreements I see most are 劳动合同 employment contracts, 房屋租赁合同 tenancy and lease agreements, 买卖合同 sale and purchase contracts, 借款合同 loan agreements, and 股权转让协议 equity transfer agreements. Whatever the subject, the architecture is familiar: a 甲方/乙方 block at the front setting out Party A and Party B with their registered addresses, unified social credit codes and contact people; numbered articles; a 未尽事宜 catch-all clause near the end; then annexes marked 附件. The signature page is where the Chinese document differs most from its UK cousin. It carries the company’s round red 公章 or a dedicated 合同专用章, the handwritten signature of the 法定代表人 or an authorised signatory, the date, and frequently a 骑缝章 — a seal stamped across the edges of the stapled pages so that no sheet can be swapped out afterwards.
Those features are part of the evidence, so they are part of the translation. Seals are described where they appear, with the wording on the seal rendered; handwritten Chinese signatures are transliterated and marked as signatures rather than quietly omitted; page markers in the 共X页第X页 style are kept; and anything left blank in the original stays visibly blank in the English, because a tidied-up gap can be read as a completed term.
The wording itself needs a translator who knows where Chinese contract drafting sets traps. 应当, 应 and 可以 map onto shall, must and may in ways that change obligation, and the choice has to be made deliberately and applied consistently. 定金 and 订金 sound almost identical and are near-identical in writing, but one is a forfeitable deposit and the other an advance payment — I translate each as what it is and flag the distinction where a UK reader could be misled. 违约金 is rendered as what the Chinese says rather than being recast as a common-law penalty or liquidated damages, since that characterisation is for the lawyers. Money amounts written out in capital Chinese numerals (人民币壹拾万元整) appear alongside Arabic figures, and both are reproduced and cross-checked so a discrepancy in the original is visible instead of smoothed over. Party A and Party B stay Party A and Party B throughout, never swapped for names halfway through. Dates in the 二〇二四年三月十五日 form are converted to unambiguous UK dates.
Bilingual contracts deserve a separate word. If your agreement already has facing Chinese and English columns and a prevailing-language clause, I translate what is actually in the Chinese column and note where the existing English departs from it — that divergence is often the reason the file landed in dispute. I translate; I do not redraft, and I do not give legal advice on which version governs.
To get a quote, send the contract as a PDF or a clear scan of every page, annexes and signature page included, and tell me who will be reading it and by when. If the matter is heading for court or for use overseas you may also need the translation notarised, which I can arrange as an add-on; the difference between the two is set out in my note on certified versus notarised translation in the UK. Revisions are included, so if your solicitor prefers a particular rendering of a defined term once they have read the draft, that gets changed without an extra charge.
The Seal for Your Official Document
Explore the certified translation solutions we offer across a range of industries.
Certified translations are often required for official purposes such as submissions to UK universities, courts, government agencies, and more.
See More Use Cases
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).
Often, yes. An in-house or counterparty English column is not a certified translation: nobody has signed a statement of accuracy for it, and in my experience the two columns disagree more often than clients expect, usually on payment terms, termination triggers and the scope of indemnities. If the matter is contentious or a UK body has asked specifically for a certified translation, I translate the Chinese column afresh and note any point where the existing English differs. If the agreement is uncontroversial and nobody has demanded certification, the existing bilingual text may be enough.
By translating what the clause says and letting the lawyers characterise it. 违约金 is a sum payable on breach; calling it a penalty or liquidated damages imports a common-law distinction that the Chinese text does not make, and that distinction can decide whether a clause is enforceable. So the English states the mechanism, keeps the Chinese term in brackets on first use, and where genuinely useful carries a short translator’s note. The same discipline applies to 定金 versus 订金 and to 不可抗力 drafting that differs from a UK force majeure clause.
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.
Yes, all of them. Seals are how a Chinese contract is executed, so leaving them out strips the document of its most important authentication. Each seal is described where it sits on the page, with the characters on the seal translated — a 合同专用章 is not the same as a general 公章, and a reader may care. The cross-page 骑缝章 is noted as a seal applied across the page joins, and the 法定代表人 signature is transliterated and marked as a handwritten signature.
I can produce an extract translation, and it is sometimes the sensible option on a hundred-page supply agreement where only the pricing schedule is in dispute. It has to be labelled as an extract, stating exactly which articles are covered, so nobody mistakes it for a complete document. Be aware that some receiving bodies will only accept a translation of the whole agreement, so check before you commission an extract. Tell me which articles matter and I will quote on those pages alone.
If you still have questions that are not covered here, feel free to reach out to me directly.