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 UK company whose employment policies exist only in Chinese — because the parent company wrote them, or because the workforce reads Chinese — eventually needs them in English, and usually at short notice: for an employment solicitor, a tribunal bundle, an HR review against UK contracts, or a buyer’s due diligence. I translate 员工手册 employee manuals and the 管理制度 policies that sit around them from Chinese into English and certify the result with a signed statement of accuracy. £30 per page, a page being 250 words; short documents back within 24 hours; delivery as a signed PDF, with longer manuals scheduled and issued in sections.
A mainland Chinese employee manual follows a recognisable shape. 总则 general provisions and scope; 招聘与入职 recruitment and onboarding; 考勤与休假, which sets out annual, sick, marriage, maternity and bereavement leave in categories with no exact UK counterpart; 薪酬与福利 pay and benefits, normally referencing 五险一金, the five social insurances and the housing fund; 绩效考核 appraisal; 奖惩制度, the rewards and disciplinary code; 保密与竞业限制 confidentiality and non-compete; and 离职管理 exit procedures. At the back sits the part that turns out to matter most in a dispute: the 员工签收确认页, the acknowledgement page an employee signs to confirm receipt, usually with a handwritten name and date. Manuals also carry a version number and a 生效日期 effective date.
Employment tribunals in England and Wales work in English, so material going into a bundle has to be translated, and it is normal for that translation to carry a certification identifying who produced it. Away from litigation, the recurring uses are advice and alignment: a solicitor advising on a dismissal needs to know exactly what the policy permitted; an HR team at a UK subsidiary has to see where the parent’s rules collide with the contract of employment and with UK practice; an acquirer wants the workforce commitments in a language its lawyers read. Occasionally the direction reverses and a UK handbook goes into Chinese so that Chinese-speaking staff are held to rules they can actually read, which is worth doing on its own merits.
The risk in this document type is not obscure vocabulary. It is over-translation. Chinese employment law has categories that do not map onto UK ones, and reaching for the nearest English HR phrase quietly changes what the policy said. 解除劳动合同, 辞退, 开除 and 除名 are four distinct outcomes; calling all four dismissal destroys a distinction a tribunal may be asked to rule on. The ladder of 警告, 记过, 记大过 and 留用察看 is a graded Chinese scheme, not the UK sequence of verbal, written and final written warnings, and mapping one onto the other is substitution rather than translation. 经济补偿金 is statutory severance calculated under Chinese rules and is not redundancy pay. So I translate the term, keep the Chinese in brackets at first use, and leave the comparison to the lawyer. The same discipline applies to tone: these manuals often read as blunt or absolute, and it is tempting to soften them into standard British HR register — but in a dispute the harshness of the wording may be the whole point, so what is on the page is what goes into the English.
Send the complete manual including annexes, since policies bolted on at the back are frequently the ones in issue. If it is destined for a bundle, say so and tell me how you want pages numbered, so the English matches the original page for page. Let me know if only certain chapters are relevant — translating the disciplinary and exit sections of a 90-page manual is entirely normal and costs a fraction of the whole. Include the acknowledgement page and any version history, give me the payroll or passport spelling of the names that appear, and tell me the hearing or deadline date rather than asking for it as soon as possible. Amendments after delivery are included; notarisation of the certification can be added where a recipient insists on it.
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.
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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).
My certified translations carry the elements a bundle ordinarily needs: translator’s name and contact details, qualifications and professional membership, identification of the source document, a signed statement that the translation is complete and accurate, and the date. Whether a particular document is admitted, and in what form, is for the tribunal and your solicitor to determine, and I make no claims about that. What I can do is match the English page for page with the Chinese, number it to your bundle convention, and remain available to confirm the certification if anyone queries it.
No. 警告, 记过, 记大过 and 留用察看 form a Chinese disciplinary ladder; the UK sequence of verbal, written and final written warnings is a different scheme with different consequences. Substituting one for the other puts words into the policy that its authors never wrote, which is exactly the wrong thing to do when the policy is being argued over. I translate each level accurately, keep the Chinese term in brackets at first use so it can be traced, and preserve the ordering so the severity relationship stays visible. Comparing the two systems is legal advice, not translation.
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, and it is often the sensible choice. Tell me which chapters you need and I will translate those, with the certification stating precisely which sections of which document were translated so nobody can mistake it for the complete manual. I usually suggest adding the general provisions and the effective-date page, since between them they establish scope and which version applied at the relevant time, and those run to a page or two. If a cross-reference inside your chapter points elsewhere, I will tell you what it points to.
Yes, and I would recommend it. The 员工签收确认页 is often the page that shows the employee received and accepted the rules, so it can carry more weight than any chapter of policy. Printed text is translated normally; handwritten names and dates are transcribed where legible and marked as handwritten; a signature is described as a signature rather than converted into a typed name. Where a date is written in Chinese order or a name is hard to read, I note that in the translation instead of resolving it silently.
If you still have questions that are not covered here, feel free to reach out to me directly.