Contexts
Legal
Translation Equivalents
- National Business Credit Lookup System
Analysis
A lookup system is provided by most business registrars in the world to allow access to registered information in a database. In China’s company law, this system differs from other systems in that the focus is on looking up business credit, however it also provides all other corporate good standing related information. A cultural reason for the difference is the notion of credit in China extends to notions of good character and trustworthiness, not merely whether lending money to this person would be worth the risk.
See our Article on the Chinese law concept for more details.
China English
Translation Equivalents
- Enterprise credit information publicity system
Analysis
The primary reason for the existing standardized translation is that the original translation team only had a small library of dictionaries and no internet access or foreign expert access, and thus chose to translate the phrase word-for-word. A strong reason for using the Chinglish version is if the English speaking reader is already highly familiar with the terminology, and through immersion in China, has learned the unique English phrasing.
In numerous public signage and other information, the Chinese activity of “revealing information to the public” is rendered as “publicity” due to a dictionary entry for the word “publicize.”