Translation - Chinese simplified-English - 作为LEO公司的货代关于深圳至瑞典货物希望能与您协商。...

Hi Ian, please?

CC: IanMegill2

Hmmm... Small modifications?
---(text start)---
Regarding LEO, ltd.'s shipment payment, I hope we can find a satisfactory solution concerning the cargo from Shenzhen to Sweden.
Your goods reached our company storehouse already last week, passed customs successfully and were transferred to the DHL warehouse, where they now await airfreighting. Since then, we have been notified by LEO that they have still not received your payment for the items, meaning that we will not yet receive payment from them. The shipment has therefore been kept temporarily in the DHL warehouse. Yesterday evening we received a phone call from LEO informing us that you were considering switching to DB Schenker for transporting this shipment. However, at this point in time, it is now extremely difficult for us to retrieve it. At best, we would have to have the shipment sent to Hong Kong, and from there back to Shenzhen – this is the only way for us to retrieve it, and we would have to ask you to reimburse us for the expenses thereby incurred. On the other hand, if you authorize us to transport this shipment to Sweden, we could offer you a very favourable price: 6.20 US$/kg shipped door-to-door all-inclusive (except for Swedish customs duties). However, we first must ask you to remit payment for the shipment.
It seems to us that this would be the most convenient way to proceed, and we therefore hope that you will agree to our proposals.
---(text end)---
What do you think, lutzmartina?

I'm no good with economic terminology...

Sounds good though...

我觉得“货代”是货运代理的意思吧，是不是“as the Freight forwarder of LEO company”？。拙见。

What do you think, Cacue: does 質代 refer to the payment for the goods, or to the person in charge of shipping?
Here in Japan we use 代 to refer to the "payment" for something all the time, but is that not the case in China?

CC: cacue23

Hi lutzmartina,
Could I have your comments on the changes I made in my translation above?
I want to make sure that I properly understood the text, especially the part about the "shipping by DB Schenker"?

I think it's the person or department of a company that's in charge of shipping. But again, I'm no good with the business stuff...

Hi Ian and everyone else,

Thanks for the corrections. Sorry it took a while. I thought for hours about 代 as it is used in this text, and consulted a good amount of dictionaries, but the solution that Imhotep came up with seems plausible to me. I will give this some more research.
Ian,I notice you keep the translation closer to the original than I have. Where did you get the "ltd." from? Is that implied in the word 公司?

The 'shipping by DB Schenker' you got absolutely right. The text I had seemed to have a paragraph break between DB and Schenker, so I assumed it to be two different sentences and two different topics.

How much Chinese to English or German translation requests appear on this website, btw? I would really like something a bit more literary. Or I may not have found them yet. Any advice?
Can I post my own text and the translation as well?

Martina

Hi lutzmartina,
Yeah, I always try to stick as close to the original meanings in the text as possible.
(If there exist ways of saying the same things in the target language!).
You're right of course, usually 公司 would be translated as "company" if you're just talking about it as a general noun, but in this case because it's affixed to the company name, i.e. LEO, I changed it to "Ltd." which is the way this kind of company would usually write their name in English.
As for the amount of translation available, I guess it's always just a question of checking in and seeing what comes up here...
You probably already know that you can get e-mail automatically sent to you whenever new translation requests appear which match these preferences?
Finally, as for the "代", I'll change it to Imhotep's suggestion and then validate the text now.
(They've probably gotten tired of waiting for it...)

PS: I wouldn't recommend posting a text and your own translation with it: the best idea would be to just post the text, and then wait for someone to translate it for you. Then you could use the discussion area under the text (i.e. here, in these boxes) to compare, and see if your version was better!
I don't think it would be fair to put up both text and translation: it's not really the way is set up to work...

Hi Ian, Imhotep, cacue23,

Imhotep's suggestion still seems the most plausible to me, however, there are some discrepancies in the text which I still cannot fathom.

For example, the goods are not from LEO, but, it seems to me, from the (unnamed) company which the writer is adressing. LEO just transported it part of the way.

This may be leading too far, I will spend another few hours thinking about it and see what I will come up with.

Yup.
That's why I thought it meant "the money (we have not yet received) from LEO for (your) shipment"
As I noted in a message above, we use "...代" all the time here in Japan to mean "payment for..." and it indeed seems to make the best sense here, because as you say, he's not writing to LEO's shipper, he's writing to get the money for the shipment from the company that originally ordered it, and he's trying to make sure that shipment by DHL as they had planned, would be okay?
Those two points seem indeed to be the main thrust of the whole letter, and the "作為" seems to me to work as a "Re:" here, to inform the recipient of the essence of the communication to follow...
But I'm not confident of my Chinese abilities: I've never lived in China, nor read many of these kinds of business letters...

Yes, business letters are not my forte, either. Well, I suppose the text is ok as it is, and without input from the writer of the text we won't know what exactly was intended. I have drawn diagrams of the relationships between the different parties involved, but I cannot see a clear solution. Such letters are, I presume, often written in a rush, and information may be presumed as known to both sender and addressee, but is hard to fathom to the translator.
Well, thanks for evaluating my maiden translation here.

My pleasure! I look forward to more!