For three consecutive years, we’ve translated ESG reports for a tech company listed in both HK and NY. Unlike companies reporting in a single market, dual-listed firms face added complexity: aligning disclosures across jurisdictions, adjusting language for different investor expectations, and ensuring compliance with multiple regulatory bodies.
What makes this type of translation different isn’t the language. It’s the movement underneath. In 2022, the focus was carbon neutrality. A year later, it shifted to Scope 3+ and supply chain emissions. By 2024, the attention had moved again — this time to green computing and a newly framed group responsibility structure. Terminology shifted, along with tone and emphasis. Some sections disappeared. Others were completely rewritten.
The Chinese and English versions don’t move in sequence. They develop in parallel, often reshaping one another. A change on the English side prompts adjustments to the Chinese draft. A revised Chinese paragraph leads to a different English rendering. Neither side leads. Both evolve together.
Feedback comes from across the company. The ESG team, legal, PR, finance — all with their own focus, their own language. They don’t always agree. One phrase may pass through four departments before it’s cleared. Add in data updates, and a paragraph may change three or four times before it settles.
Internally, the client isn’t static either. Teams shift. Roles change. One year we’re coordinating with the ESG lead. The next, someone from legal is the main point of contact. What stays constant is us. While departments restructure, we’re still here, year after year, tracking what’s been said, and what’s been changed.
Over the years, we’ve stayed with the report through every version and seen how certain terms were debated, how legal shaped specific phrasing, and how preferences varied across departments. That history of choices, revisions, and internal reasoning is part of what we carry into each new round. Lawrence manages version tracking across every round of edits. If something was debated in 2023, we know who raised it, who pushed back, and how it was resolved. CC ensures that changes in one language remain consistent in the other, even when a single English tweak requires a full rewrite in Chinese. Our internal system doesn’t just log terminology. It captures why terms were chosen, when they were changed, and where conflicts are likely to resurface.
This is why we’ve become more than a translation team. In a process where content, teams, and strategies all keep shifting, we’re often the only part that remembers what came before. We help the company tell its story — not just this year, but across time.
As we prepare for the 2025 report, we’re not expecting less change. But we’ve gotten better at staying steady in the middle of it.