International Law

No China Translation. What Were You Thinking?

By Dan

The other day I was stressing to a client how important it is to have a lawyer translate any Chinese-English contract and to emphasize that, I told him of two very similar situations involving United States companies that had fallen way down on their translations. I am going to merge the two situations into one and explain.

United States company contracts with Chinese company to have the Chinese company make product for the United States company. United States company tells Chinese company that it is absolutely critical that the product be delivered by August so as to be in the stores for the Christmas season. United States company calls me in September asking for my help in forcing the Chinese company "to live up to the contract."

United States company sends me the contract, written in both English and in Chinese, and it says the following:

• Chinese language controls.
• English language version says product must be delivered by August 10.
• Chinese language version essentially says Chinese manufacturer will do its best to deliver the product by August 10, but that if circumstances prevent it from meeting that date, its only requirement is to try to get the product out as quickly as it can.

So I review the contract and then ask the American company whether they knew that only the Chinese language version was relevant.  One company knew this and the other did not. The company that knew only the Chinese language version was relevant told me they had used someone in their company who speaks Chinese to review the Chinese language version and she "must have missed" the difference regarding the delivery dates. 

Bottom Line:  If you are going to agree to a Chinese language contract, you have no excuse for not knowing what it says.   

Full post as published by China Law Blog on August 02, 2010 (boomark / email).