American English is the variant of English that translations hosted on CBL are produced with; this is also labeled in the article and also on the URL path using the ISO code EN-US. We assume the reader is conversant in American English, but many readers have long wondered why most material produced from China is in “Chinglish” or otherwise full of strange made-up sounding words and phrases.
In the below explainer, we’ll first explain what it means for law and policy to use China English and why exactly that is incredibly confusing. Then, we’ll explore why government and academia are using China English to advance their own narratives, whether the notion of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, or the Exotic Mystique of the Orient, both are vested in the narrative that China is “different.” Finally, China English is actually not an invention of China, it’s primarily a blend of words and phrases that translators sent to work with three countries stitched together into dictionaries: Japan, the UK, and the Soviet Union.
American English is not in China law; its China English and can be confusing
The translations in the CBL resources center of Chinese law and policy provide American English terminology 100%, which means it will be different from government-hosted versions. For example, China English generally does not use American English words like corporation, entity, attorney, or statute. Its translators and lawyers say these things do not even exist in China; however, China law certainly does use them. For example, you can hire an attorney to form a private equity fund that purchases shares in a closed corporation, governed by a statute on taxes owed by a business entity. This seems obvious enough, but why would there be literally no translations into an American English?
If you are an English native speaker, the above makes perfect sense. However, to a translator or lawyer in China, these bizarre foreign-looking words have nothing to do with China. For example, there is a misconception that China has no corporations and instead uses the joint stock company business form instead. Goldman Sachs and other investment banks in the US early on did use Joint Stock Company forms early on, but the form is so impractical that most companies in the world abandoned it, including China. If you look close, you’ll discover that the words used in China law translations mean nothing like what they mean in US English.
Below, we will go over why there are basically no accurate American English translations and almost everything is in China English. The method for arriving at these conclusions is science-based and uses an evidence-based method. These are described separately. The idea that translations should be accurate, and based on scientifically recognized principles and backed by evidence seems highly obvious. However, in practice, institutional incentives have resulted in a proliferation of China law that is dangerously misleading.
Government translations have important political goals
Chinese government websites often tell you in a subtext, if you want to understand what these laws are saying, maybe you should learn Chinese. CBL’s translations are intended to make that unnecessary for business professionals, but it’s important to understand why government and academic China law translations are incoherent.
All of these things exist and are real in China, however, if exotic made-up terms are used to describe ordinary business law matters, cognitive tests show that typical readers are unable to understand what they are saying. In widely available translations of Chinese law, the majority of terms are made-up, using a blend of UK English (about 30%) fictional terms invented in politically-necessitated bursts during Meiji Japan (1880s), Soviet Russia (1940s), and late Cultural Revolution China (1970s). Since government provided translations have a history of being misleading, the PRC government deems them unofficial.
There are immense socialist political reasons for government to provide useless, misleading translations Moreover, Marxists point out that spending taxpayer money on corporate welfare of this nature is un-Socialist, a slightly edited machine translation done by a college intern is already quite generous. While there is also often pressure for China to produce great translations into English, some Communist Party thinkers point out that this is Linguistic Imperialism, the notion that China must subjugate itself to being a “spoke” on the “hub” of American Empire, that it must give corporate welfare to rich Americans.
Academics often deliberately mistranslate China law to fit narratives
Western academic law translations of China also tend to be very misleading, and this is something part of a larger trend criticized by Asian-American academics. Oriental Studies has a long tradition of illegitimately exoticizing Asian culture, and using made-up or strange words to describe Asian cultures has been criticized as part of the exoticizing process.
Secondly, scholars are focused on critique and criticism, thus the more unusual and bizarre an Asian law looks, the more forceful the criticism. For example, the word “vocational training” is often translated as “re-education,” because it provides better evidence for arguments about authoritarian legal systems. Existing China law translations are fertile ground for exoticizing the country, because made up words are excellent tabula rasa for an academic argument that gets reader attention and more importantly citations.
China’s position on the academics is that they don’t understand China, since internal experts insist the translations using made-up words are absolutely perfect and completely useful, without any flaws. In reality, socialism demands that budgets for corporate welfare be as small as possible, too small to produce an accurate translation. The budgets are usually so small that the only realistic way to do them is quietly get college interns involved, usually for free, but they’ll get a good job down the line. Nonetheless, translation experts insist that as if by magic, perfect work is being done, because big promises are competitive and brutal honesty rarely rewarded.
To explain why, despite having superficially perfect translations of all this work, the western world gravely misunderstands and even slanders China, a coherent theory was needed. Thus, an unscientific theory that “foreigners simply can’t understand China” has emerged to account for why academia is making such an immense stream of false statements about China based on true translations. Since China English isn’t even coherent, the English-speaking academics are authoritative in their own culture, whereas the Mandarin-speaking experts in China say the opposite, and each camp accuses the other of incredible dishonesty.
What is you are not an academic or politician, and just trying to do business legally and not get in trouble? As the anti-corruption campaign in China made clear, the deceit and fraud in the world of politicians and academics is often downright criminal. For either world, translation is an instrument for either political purpose or academic purpose, but not business purpose. The translations made available by CBL are made with a business purpose in mind, free of political/academic conflicts of interests.
Why UK English is used and almost never American
At least in theory, translations produced in China about the law and policy are using United Kingdom English in rejection of American English. This in itself is something impossible to understand from the perspective of English-speaking countries. In general, most sophisticated UK and American producers, will use the appropriate English version for their target markets. This is also the case in the law. For example, in the United Kingdom a patent attorney does not necessarily have a law degree, whereas in the United States they necessarily do, and the non-lawyer role is called a patent agent.
Some differences are not merely semantic but also conceptual, for example, solicitors and barristers in the United Kingdom differ from United States attorneys. Chinese jurisdictions may selectively adopt one system, for example Hong Kong has barristers and solicitors, Shenzhen does not. In practice, if an American concept was adopted by US law, mainland law translators will attempt to force UK English on it, even if it doesn’t fit. Therefore, attorneys general in China are actually translated using a Russian word (прокурор, prokuror), and using the English equivalent, Procurator, even though it means something totally different than the UK law enforcement procurators still in use in Scotland. The UK attorneys all had “Crown” in their title, something distasteful to Karl Marx, thus Soviet English filled the gap.
Translators in China have traditionally believed that only one English variant should ever be used, so a choice of either American or United Kingdom should be used, but not both. Beijing and Hong Kong usually picked United Kingdom, but local governments such as Shanghai and Sichuan actually often chose American English for trade reasons. Since Beijing makes the laws, it results in an absence of any American English terminology, but lots of UK, Meiji Japan English, and Soviet Union English.
But why is China law blending UK, Meiji Empire, and Soviet Union English?
The blend ratio for China/UK seems to be about 70% China 30% UK, which means only expert readers in China can understand them. Of the China-specific English, most actually came from ancient translation inventions of the Soviet Union and Japan.
Traditionally, Chinese to English translations of law and several other fields are a blend of United Kingdom and China English. During the process with which official China government translations are produced, according to the government’s own official narrative, the translators in China would produce a translation of an important document, and show it to the UK Embassy. Then, the UK Embassy replied that they could not understand the document at all, although it is packed with UK English words. The Chinese translation office had two things they could have concluded from this: (1) either they are incompetent writers; or (2) the UK Embassy were incompetent readers.
While this seems a little surprising from a Western perspective, this literally appears in published eye-witness accounts of what happened at the time. From the 1970s through about five years ago, the bias was always to assume that the reader is incompetent. More recently, statistical techniques were able to show that translators in China were simply making up words that only exist in China and are only understandable to people who specifically studied those words.