Nicholas Lakeland, Employment Partner at Laytons and Donfil Huang, Legal Advisory Manager at Dezan Shira & Associates (DSA) share their legal knowledge on whether we can sign a contract in another foreign language.
For all employment contracts concluded in China under Chinese laws, it must be written in Chinese, or at least have a Chinese version if you have the same contract in another language.
If you present foreigners with an employment contract in their native language, specify in the contract that the Chinese version shall prevail. In the case of a dispute, you will have to submit a contract to labor arbitration where they will resort to the Chinese version of the contract. If you specify in the employment contract for example the English version prevails, you will spend additional time and resources to hire a mutual translation firm to translate the English version into Chinese.
Contracts of employment in England do have to be in the English language. There are certain circumstances where employees are for example, provided with health and safety information in a different language if English is not their first language and that is very important because you are talking about the health and safety of employees, and that overrides any other consideration in terms of what you are telling employees.
Drafting a contract of employment in China and the UK (minimum requirements) Episode four: Can we sign a contract in another foreign language?
