Quick summary: Chinese is one of the languages NAATI offers its Certified Translator test in. Three things shape a Chinese document job: whether the text is simplified or traditional, which jurisdiction issued the document, and how the names on it were romanised. Answer those three when you order and most of the usual back-and-forth disappears.
Chinese is among the languages NAATI currently offers its Certified Translator test in, the highest translator credential under its Certification System.
Beyond availability, Chinese document work has its own recurring questions — and unusually, most of them can be settled by you before the translator starts.
Simplified or traditional
Both are Chinese writing systems in current official use, and documents differ accordingly.
You do not need to identify which you have — a certified translator will. But mentioning it if you know, or simply sending a clear scan, avoids ambiguity. What matters more is that traditional-script documents are frequently older or from different jurisdictions, which brings its own conventions.
Which jurisdiction issued it
This is the most useful thing you can tell a translator, because civil document systems differ.
Documents may come from mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong or Macau, or from Chinese-language records issued elsewhere. Each has its own document types, issuing authorities, formats and naming conventions, and some issue bilingual documents where others do not.
Say which applies to each document when you order. It affects how the issuing body is rendered and what a reader will expect to see alongside.
Names and romanisation
Chinese names raise two distinct issues.
Which romanisation
The same characters produce different English spellings depending on the system used and the regional pronunciation behind it. A name romanised through pinyin will differ from one romanised by an older system or from a Cantonese reading — Zhang and Cheung, Li and Lee, Chen and Chan.
Your passport has already fixed one spelling. Supply it, and supply it for everyone named in the documents. Without that, a translator produces a legitimate romanisation that may not match the rest of your file.
Name order
Chinese convention places the family name first. Australian forms expect it last.
A translator renders the name as it appears rather than silently reordering it, which can make a document look inconsistent with an Australian form that has already reordered it. Supplying your passport form resolves this, because the passport has already made the decision.
Where a document also shows an adopted English given name alongside the Chinese name, say whether you want both reflected — they often both appear, and a reader comparing documents needs to see the connection.
Seals are the signature
Chinese-language official documents rely heavily on seals — the red company or authority chop — where a Western document might rely on a handwritten signature.
Every seal is translated and described. A seal is frequently what makes the document official, so a translation that rendered the text and ignored the chops would be missing the point.
Seals are also usually red, which is a concrete reason to follow the Department of Home Affairs' instruction to scan in colour. A greyscale scan turns a crisp red chop into a grey blur, and an unreadable seal becomes an illegibility note instead of a translated authority.
Household and civil records
Household registration documents are common in Chinese-language document sets, and they behave like other family registers: their value is in the history, not the current page.
Send the complete booklet, in order, including pages recording people who have left the household and entries that have been struck through. Selective translation of "the current page" removes the relationship evidence the document exists to provide.
If you already hold a notarial certificate with a translation
This comes up often enough to be worth its own answer.
Notarial offices in some Chinese-language jurisdictions issue a certificate that bundles the original document, a notarial attestation and an English translation into one booklet. People arriving in Australia frequently already hold one and reasonably ask whether they still need anything.
The question is not whether the booklet looks official. It is whether the translation inside it meets the Australian requirement.
What the requirement actually asks
Home Affairs asks that, for translations produced in Australia, you use a translator accredited by NAATI. For translations produced outside Australia, the translator does not need NAATI accreditation — but every translation must still carry the translator's full name, address and telephone number, and qualifications and experience in the language they are translating, all supplied in English.
So open the booklet and look for those details. If the translation carries them, it may well satisfy the requirement. If the English pages are unattributed — no named translator, no contact details, no qualifications — then it does not, however impressive the seals around it.
If in doubt, ask before re-ordering
A quick question to the receiving authority is cheaper than a duplicate translation. Where the answer is that the existing booklet is not sufficient, a NAATI-certified translation of the underlying document is the fix — and you already have the document to hand.
Dates and eras
Most documents use Gregorian dates, but some — particularly Taiwanese official documents — use an era-based year count rather than the Gregorian year.
A translator renders the date as it appears, identifying the system where the document does. They will not convert an era year into a Gregorian one, because that is a calculation rather than a translation. Where a conversion is needed for an Australian reader, supply it alongside.
Getting the direction right
NAATI certifies by direction. To lodge documents in Australia you need Chinese into English; a translator certified English into Chinese is not automatically certified the other way.
When you verify a practitioner number through NAATI's tool, check the direction you need appears in the credentials listed.
Before you order
Tell the translator which jurisdiction issued each document, supply your passport romanisation for every person named, send household registers complete, and scan in colour so the seals survive.
Our guide to Urdu translation covers the equivalent issues in another script, and you can upload documents to LodgeHQ Translate for a fixed-price quote.
NAATI publishes its practitioner identification guidance and Home Affairs its document and translation requirements; both are updated over time.