Advanced Business/Legal Materials

Can anyone recommend any advanced business or legal Chinese learning materials? My business Chinese is already ok (I use it everyday in a manufacturing company), but I’ve started to see some advanced business materials creeping onto the market. One book I saw that looked alright was “Open for Business: Lessons in Chinese Commerce for the New Millenium,” by Jane CM Kuo, ISBN 0887273548. You can look at sample chapters at http://www.cheng-tsui.com. There is also a new business Chinese book coming out from Chinese University Press in 2004. It seems like it will have more primary materials than Open for Business. What about legal Chinese? Has anyone come across any published study materials? I improved my business Chinese by slaving through newspapers and magazines. I don’t think I could do the same with legalese. It seems too quirky for me to have the time to wade into it unaided. Any advice?

For Taiwan law, a good place to start is the two volume set of ‘Major Laws’ with red binding. I’ll post publications details later. This set has Chinese and English on facing pages. The section on Civil Law was translated decades ago by a real expert. The rest is pretty uneven. Be warned that the laws change regularly, so for serious work you need to be using the current version of the law. law.moj.gov.tw is useful.

There are many excellent official translations of Chinese laws.

I recommend spending quality time with the translations and being ready to read standard texts in English on the law to help your understanding. I doubt that a textbook is going to help you much.Be aware that many terms come from Japanese and German law–you need to be able to recognize these when you see them.

[quote=“Feiren”]For Taiwan law, a good place to start is the two volume set of ‘Major Laws’ with red binding. I’ll post publications details later. This set has Chinese and English on facing pages. The section on Civil Law was translated decades ago by a real expert. The rest is pretty uneven. Be warned that the laws change regularly, so for serious work you need to be using the current version of the law. law.moj.gov.tw is useful.

There are many excellent official translations of Chinese laws.

I recommend spending quality time with the translations and being ready to read standard texts in English on the law to help your understanding. I doubt that a textbook is going to help you much.Be aware that many terms come from Japanese and German law–you need to be able to recognize these when you see them.[/quote]

You bring up something that I have feared about reading legal Chinese: different sources of legal terms and theory. Now that you bring this up, I realize that I can read Hong Kong law pretty easily. It is almost always translated from English, and I’m generally familiar with the UK legal system’s structure and terminology. I’ve had a bit of trouble with Taiwanese law, especially with the language of briefs and legal notices. Mainland law is bullshit in and of itself. Our guys here at the factory who handle external affairs and customs clearance get confused because different government departments use different language to say the same thing, and that’s on a good day. Most of the time, government departments can’t even agree among themselves what the law says. Thanks for the advice and link.