Chinese translator

Choose Simplified Chinese (zh-Hans) for mainland China and Singapore, and Traditional Chinese (zh-Hant) for Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and most Western diaspora communities. The difference is in the character form, not in the spoken language. We confirm the script variant per project in the quote, matched to your target market.

Mandarin (Putonghua) is the spoken and written standard of mainland China, Taiwan and Singapore. Cantonese is not mutually intelligible with Mandarin by speech and is used in Hong Kong, Macau and Guangdong. We never substitute Mandarin for Cantonese: both are separate languages in our cluster, and you request each one separately.

Since November 2023 mainland China has joined the Hague Apostille Convention (1961). Documents from mainland China can since then be legalised by apostille; before that, consular legalisation was required. For Hong Kong and Macau the apostille has applied for longer. For a UK-issued document going to China, an apostille is obtained through the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) — see [GOV.UK — Get a document legalised](https://www.gov.uk/get-document-legalised). We guide you to the right route by region of origin and arrange the certified translation that goes with it.

The UK has no sworn-translator institute, so there is no "sworn translator" as a legal office here. For official acceptance we provide certified translation: a signed and dated statement of accuracy from the translator or the agency, with our contact details. Where a body asks for more, this can be escalated to notarisation by a solicitor or notary public, or to an apostille or legalisation through the FCDO. This applies to UKVI and Home Office immigration, company registrations, notarial deeds and court papers; we confirm in the quote which level your receiving authority requires.

When translating from English or Dutch into Chinese we convert fully to Chinese characters in the right script, Simplified or Traditional. Proper names we romanise in Pinyin where your audience expects it, or render in suitable characters agreed with you. When translating from Chinese into English we follow Pinyin for names, with the Hanzi optionally in brackets for disambiguation.

We combine native specialist translators with a structured QA layer: a term list, a script and character check, and a second review where the legal field, risk profile or volume requires it. CAT tools (Trados, memoQ, Phrase TMS) keep terminology and character choice consistent across volume and repeated content, and a translation memory keeps follow-up work aligned and lowers the cost over time.

We work with native specialist Chinese translators and reference the recognised UK professional bodies — the ITI (Institute of Translation and Interpreting), the CIOL (Chartered Institute of Linguists) and, for interpreting, the NRPSI (National Register of Public Service Interpreters). These are bodies of reference for the profession; we name them so you can see the standard the work is held to.

A Chinese translation agency takes the coordination off your hands: we select the specialist who fits your document and sector, decide Simplified or Traditional script with you, arrange certification, notarisation or legalisation where an authority requires it, and have the work checked by a second reviewer. You keep one point of contact for script, terminology, scheduling and delivery, all under a single quote. A skilled freelance translator does excellent work too; the difference an agency adds is bringing those moving parts together so you are not managing them separately.