The State Commission for Administration of Standardization recently approved China's first set of standards on the quality of translation, effective from Sept. 1 of this year.

"The standards aim to regulate translation services and protect the interests of clients," said Wu Xizeng, head of the drafting committee for the standards and general manager of the China Translation and Publishing Corporation.

"They provide both practical qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis of the quality of translations," he said.

The standards were drafted by the Translators Association of China, the China Translation and Publishing Corporation and several other organizations.

As China opens further to the outside world, the demand for translation has been growing very fast. According to the Translators Association of China, there are currently over 3,000 registered translation companies in China. The number may actually be closer to 10,000 as many small companies, which are registered as consultant agencies, also conduct translation businesses.

Translation has grown into a 1.33 billion US dollar-a-year business in China. The market scale is expected to reach 21 billion yuan (2.53 billion dollars) by 2005, and could be twice that in the near future, said an expert with the association.

Source: Xinhua