Yesterday, a colleague handed me a photocopy of a recent South China Morning Post Post Magazine article “Pass Masters” by Simon Parry. Unfortunately, the photocopy didn’t have the publication date and I haven’t been able to find an online link to the article. I apologize for responding without proper citation. If anyone does have the link, please let me know.

Uncontextualized translation seems to be one of the great dividers between Chinese and English readers of news both virtual and printed. At the very least, uncontextualized translation seems to add fuel to stereotypical fires, such as “China can’t be trusted”. Reporters often translate “words” in order to explain a situation. However, rarely to they remind readers that the histories and cultural schemes in which the orignal words operate are different from those in which the translation operates.

For example, in his expose Pass Masters, Simon Parry uses “shooter” to translate 枪手. Thus:

Stand-in candidates, known as “shooters”, claim to be able to exploit loopholes in a globally respected examination system to help students with weak English skills get the qualification the need, along with a home-country degree, to secure university places.

Testimony suggests IELTS exams are being infiltrated by shooters on a nationwide scale, potentially earning places in overseas universities at the expense of properly qualified students.

A speaker of American English, I understand Parry’s use of “shooter” to refer to a vague, kind of random criminal. His usage also inflames a sense of unscrupulous goings on in China and that these nefarious dealings pose a threat to British education and by extension Western civilization as we know it.

However, a better translation of 枪手 would be “hired gun”, which points to the specificity of what is happening. And this is precisely where and why contextualized translation becomes necessary: in Mandarin a 枪手 is anyone hired to write something for another person. Thus, 枪手 also translates as “ghostwriter”, a respectable career in English-speaking worlds.

Two interrelated points on how translating 枪手as “hired gun / ghostwriter” (rather than “shooter”) might clarify why Chinese students cheat on IELTS and other exams. First, “hired gun” indicates that this kind of cheating is not random, but has an actual target. Second, “ghostwriter” reminds us that writing and writers have real social value in Chinese society.

These semantic points draw the English reader’s attention to the stakes involved in Chinese word-wars, past and present, where the representation of the self through language has been and remains fundamental to social mobility and status. The most obvious example would be the Chinese imperial examination system, which not only evaluated candidates on the quality of their answer, but also the quality of their calligraphy, elevating personal cultivation to an administrative ideal. The real social value of self-representation through how one writes a test is yearly confirmed through the gaokao and associated cheating scams.

One very simple reason that success on IELTS and other standardized tests matter enough to employ a 枪手 is that student visas are one of the few visas that western countries regularly grant Chinese citizens. Even students who can afford to go abroad and brush up their foreign language skills have difficulty getting visas to backpack in the US or England, let alone poor students who might go abroad for work experience that would lead to better language skills.

Another very simple reason to cheat is that many students who want to study abroad have, for various reasons, opted out of the Chinese system and/or cannot compete in the gaokao. A western education is their only real option. Students who are in international schools, or students who are good, but not able to get the gaokao scores necessary for one of China’s top ten schools need education alternatives, which western schools represent. However, access to these schools – like access to higher education in China – is regulated through an exam system.

Success in taking IELTS and SAT and their ilk have real, material consequences for Chinese students with dreams of global mobility and status.  In Shenzhen, students who cheat are more to be pitied than villified because only the inept (无能力), the greedy (贪心), and the desperate (无奈) cheat. Socially, the onus is on test givers to invigilate fairly, taking into account every possible venue for cheating and knowing that a crude social darwinism is at work: better invigilation techniques will select for better cheaters. Thus, perhaps a more accurate interpretation of 枪手 success in Shenzhen would be that IELTS has failed a test in cross-cultural competance.

That Chinese students experience and sit the IELTS exam within the context of Chinese exam systems is not unsurprising. What is surprising is how Westerners have failed to ask ourselves why it has been so easy to think about IELTS (and other standardized tests) as extensions of the Chinese system.

According to the lead-in for the Parry article:

They are known as ‘shooters’ and they will commit fraud for a price.

This language makes Chinese students seem like characters in a B movie. Maybe they are. However, Chinese students are caught in a global system that both rewards degrees from famous universities and exploits unequal mobility between countries. They are also ill-served by Western journalists, who can move (relatively) freely between home countries and China, but do not use this opportunity to understand what has been said.