The Linguist

24 The Linguist Vol/60 No/5 2021 thelinguist.uberflip.com FEATURES In-house translators face similar challenges worldwide, but there are specific issues in Hong Kong, explains Terence Lee W hen we talk about legal translation, we might think of the translation of laws, regulations and various types of legal provisions. Yet this is far from true for in-house law firm translators in Hong Kong. Only medium-sized and large law firms employ in-house translators, and they usually have broad practices, so the documents to be translated are various: court documents (statements, affidavits, judgments, court orders), agreements, contracts, litigation documents, patent extracts, documents of listed companies, memoranda, legal letters, articles of association and prospectuses, as well as in-house documents such as brochures, pitches, marketing materials and web content. Since the 1970s, Chinese has been an official language in Hong Kong. The bilingual context means a stable demand for people who are well versed in English and Chinese, whether from the government/public sector or the private sector. However, while government and public organisations do recruit translators, there are few vacancies, and a large portion of the positions are on a contractual basis, ranging from a few months to three years. For the private sector, financial and legal translation are the two major fields. The former comprises financial printers and translation companies specialising in the translation of corporate documents for Hong Kong listed companies, such as IPOs, annual reports and announcements. They serve their clients round the clock and the translation team may need to work on shifts, even overnight. It's a gruelling working schedule, but you need a couple of years of translation experience such as this to become a law firm translator. Many of my colleagues, like me, worked as financial translators for several years first. It is a very ordinary career path for legal translators in Hong Kong because in-house positions normally require five to eight years' relevant experience, with three to four years' post-university experience as a minimum (although law firms do occasionally recruit translators with less experience). Although there are nearly 1,000 Hong Kong solicitors' firms (excluding the foreign law firms which do not practice in Hong Kong law), only a few dozen recruit full-time translators. These are the ones with legal teams of at least 100 people. The smaller firms have their routine translation work handled by paralegals, trainee solicitors or even the solicitors themselves, and outsource translation work to translation companies as required, especially in urgent circumstances. So despite the need for professional translators, the competition for each vacancy is high. What the work involves All legal documents are legally binding. They appear in the public domain (in printed form or on the internet), and may be provided as evidence in the courts. The translation must be equivalent to the original text, so even advertisements and newspaper articles cannot be summarised in the translation process. Even if the original text contains errors, you have to translate it literally. For example, if a drug-taker in a police statement says in Cantonese 我賣咗啲四仔 (四號海洛英), you have to translate the sentence as 'I sold those sei chai' (i.e. 'heroin') even though he means 我買咗啲四仔 ('I bought those sei chai'). In both Cantonese and Mandarin, the pronunciations of the words 賣 and 買 are very similar, except the tone. The translator has to reflect the literal meaning rather than guessing or correcting what the person said. The proportion of English to Chinese and Chinese to English translation is generally 50:50, but the translation of litigation documents is most Chinese to English. They cover complaint letters, which may be written in Cantonese, receipts and invoices, legal opinion letters, statements, newspaper and magazine articles, advertisements and reports. Any written evidence in Chinese may need to be translated, so subjects range from medical and shipping to the entertainment industry. I would not know much about the legendary actor Elizabeth Taylor if I had not been asked to translate her biography and filmography into Chinese. You could hardly imagine that you would encounter such documents in a law firm. Many law firm translation tasks are urgent, but not all. Translators need to negotiate with lawyers on deadlines and submission procedures. We need the bargaining power and skills to allow time for an accurate translation, and the sense and ability to prioritise the translation tasks. To speed up the translation process, we use dictionaries and the internet. We can get plenty of information from the web, but a translator also needs traditional dictionaries – either general or specialist – on their desk. In many cases, correct and accurate information is not free. For the official Chinese translation, especially of legal and financial terms, we had better find it on the websites of the Legal in Hong Kong

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