"Taiwan, China"

Former occasional poster, sometime lurker in the interim, inspired to make a post here for the first time in fifteen years or so, nice to see this place still going.

Any translators here? I’ve done this gig for twenty-three years now, tallying up some three million plus English words from Chinese, but I can count the numbers of times I’ve come across “中国台湾” on one hand. I’d like to hear some perspectives about how people approach this and any potential ramifications. Do you simply act as an apolitical instrument and give it as “Taiwan, China”? Or do you leave the “China” out?

Having lived there and been married to a Taiwanese woman for lo all these years, my sympathies are naturally with Taiwan when it comes to geopolitical tensions. Going through previous instances in my work I see that I’ve given it as “Taiwan, China [sic]” or just “Taiwan.” My clients for the type of work I do are lawyers and translation agencies in the UK and the US seeking translations of Chinese patents and journal articles, so I suspect that I wouldn’t be exposing them to the jealously nationalistic eyes of Chinese nationals who might raise a stink.

To be clear, I’m not actually all that worried about this, and will invariably use “Taiwan” without the “China” qualifier. But I am interested in hearing how others approach what has a non-zero potential for being a thorny issue.

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I usually refuse such work. Or leave Taiwan without China.

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It’s a clinical trial, so not directly political. I’m not in a position to refuse work these days. So yeah, I’m going to do what I did the previous time, and just say “Taiwan.”

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Yeah. Then just keep Taiwan for the English portion of it.

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