I visited the PRC a couple of times from Hong Kong about fifteen years ago. On each occasion our hosts were keen to give us a bit of a tour. One thing that always featured was a trip to a local school where we shown young kids (six, seven, eight years old) being taught English (this was in and around Guangzhou). They used to ask us questions to show off / practice their English – what’s your favourite football team / player was a common one. There were a helluva lot of Manchester United fans – little beggars. I spent a while talking to one of their teachers – he was a Canadian guy, probably in his early twenties, went round all of the local schools on a pushbike. I remember he said to me that he had just decided to “drop off the grid” so came to China and got a job TEFL.
Granted that was in the early 2000’s but it wouldn’t surprise me if there were enough English speakers to handle any translation needs that were required when it came to manuals.
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Originally Posted by Olefin
Also China has a lot of people who speak English as well as Chinese and can read and speak both languages - they happen to live in Hong Kong - so that is a great source for the Chinese to get people to both translate manuals and for providing translation for training
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Possibly, but until the handover the majority of them would be either BNO's (British Nationals Overseas) or BDTC's (British Dependent Territories Citizens) so any work they wished to carry out for the PRC would be entirely voluntary. As noted above though, I don't think getting translators would be a problem.