Ahead of US-China trade talks, veteran negotiators warn that deals can often get lost in translation
- Former trade negotiators from Office of the US Trade Representative discuss ‘making up words’ to get a deal over the line and ‘haggling over individual words’
- Negotiators from the United States and China are believed to be closing in on a deal to bring an end to the US-China trade war
As negotiators from the United States and China grow closer to clinching a deal to end the trade war, both sides will be wary of the complications that can arise from issues of language, interpretation and translation during negotiations.
While both sides are negotiating in their native tongues with the help of simultaneous translation, the subsequent text will be translated into both English and Chinese. These translations will then be “scrubbed” by lawyers and technical translators in an effort to reach a final text that both sides are happy with.
But history shows that this is rarely straightforward as ambiguity is hard to avoid in international trade deals, while experienced negotiators have said that trying to iron out arguments over words, phrases or even grammar can be “worse than pulling teeth”.
With relation to the enforcement of an agreement, the US is keen to avoid any uncertainty as it wishes to be able to unilaterally determine if China has breached the terms of the deal and decide on the punishment.
It's very hard to enforce anything under the Chinese because their system is both complicated and relatively opaque, and there aren't that many Mandarin speakers around that have the requisite technical trade and legal skills
“The US is pushing hard under a political imperative that keeps changing. [US trade representative Robert] Lighthizer is rightly focused on an enforceable agreement. But it's very hard to enforce anything under the Chinese because their system is both complicated and relatively opaque, and there aren't that many Mandarin speakers around that have the requisite technical trade and legal skills,” said Elena Bryan, who spent 17 years negotiating trade deals for the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR), and who now runs consultancy Pilot Rock Global Strategies.
In an indication of some of the challenges that have been faced, on March 28, Taoran Notes, a social media account used by the Chinese trade delegation, published a note saying that the two negotiation teams were checking the final text “line by line and word by word”.
The account said that the two sides had debated the suitability of a single word for two hours during agriculture talks via video conferencing. After failing to reach an agreement, they had to put it aside and move onto other topics. This is a common scenario in trade talks, which veterans say can be “frustrating and long”.