Translation talk:People v Ruan Xiaohuan (2023)

Source

@Jan.Kamenicek: About source, please see documents (in Chinese) on the linked Commons category page: commons:Category:Sentences of Ruan Xiaohuan on Feb 10, 2023 . Shinohara Chihiro (talk) 16:33, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

@Shinohara Chihiro:I see, but that is the Chinese original. What is the source of the English translation? --Jan Kameníček (talk) 16:35, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

Probably the uploader translated it her/himself. @Chu Tse-tien: Can you explain? Shinohara Chihiro (talk) 16:37, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I myself translated it. The original Chinese text can be found on the Chinese wikisource page. I am a translator. Here is my profile on gengo: https://gengo.com/hire/profile/159064/ (as proof of my translator identity, not in any circumstance shall it be rendered as any sort of promotion since it is actually pretty dangerous to reveal my identity here) Chu Tse-tien (talk) 17:07, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

Title issues

Unlike common law jurisdictions, Chinese courts don't use case names like "Prosecuting authority v. Defendant" for criminal cases, and neither they are prosecuted in the name of "People" (unlike jurisdictions like California or the Philipines). The Chinse version of the verdict uses court name+case number+reason for verdict (zh:上海市第二中级人民法院 (2021) 沪 02 刑初 67 号刑事判决书) as the title. Another common type of title in Chinese Wikisource for naming for criminal trial documents is defendant+accused offences+first/second instance trial+document type (reason for verdict for 1st instance/reason for judgment for appeals) (such as zh:林森浩故意杀人案一审刑事判决书). @Chu Tse-tien: Would you consider an alternative title?廣九直通車 (talk) 07:30, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

> Would you consider an alternative title?

No. Because they actually imitated this common law convention when translated into English, and more interestingly, they followed the British tradition, which made the so-called ‘People’ cannot be defendants. (So if the defendant appeals, the title shall be rendered as ‘People v XXX (A)’.)

I know this sounds weird, and you must want some sources. I will find some shortly after, but I’d like to reply first because what you said is wrong and this was indeed their official convention, used in their own publications, not something I made up myself. Chu Tse-tien (talk) 11:43, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Now the sources ;)

1. The Supreme Court of China actually publishes their official case books in English called ‘Selected Cases from the Supreme People’s Court of the People’s Republic of China’. For the time being, there were three volumes already published. In these volumes, they followed the British tradition, using ‘The People v XXX’ in first-instance judgements of criminal cases and ‘The People v XXX (Appellant)’ or ‘The People v XXX (A)’ for short in second-instance judgements.

2. The website ‘www.lawinfochina.com’ (the official library run by the Peking University Legal Information Centre) has long adopted this convention but removed the ‘the’ at the beginning, if you search "site: lawinfochina.com People v." using a search engine, you can confirm this yourself. Chu Tse-tien (talk) 12:10, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

I see, thanks for your explanation! Just a corrigendum that in the UK (plus other places where the British sovereign is their head of state), criminal prosecutions are initiated in the name of the sovereign, i.e. Rex or Regina, R in short.廣九直通車 (talk) 04:59, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

… I’m speechless. The CCP regime, of course, cannot copy every detail of the citation tradition of British courts to their own; they just followed the style of it. And I, of course, know that in Britain, criminal cases are prosecuted in the name of the sovereign, and that is exactly the point—the CCP regime copied that and changed the ‘R’ to the ‘People’. For that, they claimed that they represent the ‘People’, and they shamelessly put ‘People’s’ in the names of every institution, like ‘The People’s Public Security Organ’ (人民公安), ‘The People’s Court’ (人民法院), ‘The People’s Procuratorate’ (人民检察院), etc. Chu Tse-tien (talk) 17:42, 6 April 2023 (UTC)