Contexts
Legal
Translation Equivalents
- Partnership Entity
- Partnership
Analysis
In China’s relatively recent partnership law legislation, a partnership is a mode of business organization that allows for a common enterprise with pass-through tax treatment. This concept is well-known to American law, which has partnerships in all states. China’s newer statutes on partnerships provide that all of the new partnership types will be formed as entities, and included a sunset provision for the previous non-entity partnership laws, which were removed after the enactment of the Civil Code of China. Where necessary to make clear this is an entity its own identification number in contrast to existing common law partnerships in English jurisdictions, the word ‘entity’ can be added, but generally the word ‘partnership’ will be equally clear to readers in most contexts.
See our Article on the Chinese law concept for more details.
China English
Translation Equivalents
- Partnership Enterprise
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. At the time, the legal translators lacking internet access were aware that the new partnership entities were a variant of the prior civil law partnerships requiring an entity status, however, they lacked access about what business entities are, and thus defaulted to the dictionary word “enterprise.” However, it is exceedingly unlikely that any native English speaking reader will be able to determine what an enterprise refers to, thus it should only be used where mandated by law—and as required by law, include a warning to the reader about the risks of relying on such translations.