I had dinner with an old colleague of mine who reminded me that I had the best Mandarin in the entire law firm and that I was the one who taught all of them Chinese legal terms. The Boy choked on his carrot juice.
That’s right, ladies & gentlemen. The Frou, who has never taken a single classroom lesson in Chinese and whose finite knowledge of the language comes entirely from watching Channel 8 drama series, have explained contracts entirely in Mandarin and even taught my colleagues how to.
The fact that I have completely forgotten about this episode of my life could only mean that I am not very proud of it.
This whole thing came about because our firm acts for a large housing developer. Whenever our client launches new housing properties, the purchasers who buys those properties will need to come to us to sign their sale & purchase contracts and we, as the developer’s lawyers, have to explain the contract terms to them.
The problem is, our local friendly purchasers are not all your savvy-went-to-school-and-speaks-English type. It is one thing for a lawyer to explain a contract in layman’s term, it is an entirely different matter if he need to explain it in layman’s terms of another language. I’m talking about Malay, Tamil and the various Chinese dialects (Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkein etc.)
There are about ten young aspiring lawyers in the firm, me inclusive, and being “young” anything in a law firm hierarchy automatically means you do all the shit jobs and explaining contracts in Chinese/Malay/Tamil falls squarely within the definition of “shit jobs”.
The drill is, whenever a Purchaser arrive, our Receptionist will do a quick check on his/her language ability and call the Librarian to check which of the ten young aspiring lawyers (henceforth known as “Minions”), who are cowering under bookshelves trying to catch a nap, has the right language skill. The Librarian will then unreservedly wake the appropriate sleeping Minion and said Minion will have to put on his/her public face and go attend to the contract signing.
Except NONE of the Minions can speak Mandarin and because I apparently studied in the Lion City where people order chicken rice in Mandarin, I was automatically deemed a Mandarin expert. All Purchasers who can only speak Mandarin are sent to me. Did I protest? Everyday. Did it work? No.
I shall not go into the mechanics of how I bullshit my way through (in Mandarin) but let’s just say that I did a job well enough to get the contracts signed by slightly baffled Purchasers who left wondering what hit them. And when you have done it once, the next few times becomes easier. At some point, I even manage to learn Chinese legal terms such as “contract”.
Frou: Zhe ge si ni de…..(holds up the contract) er....
Purchaser: He tong?
Frou: Yes, yes. He tong.
There was one instance when our client launch a new condominium in a Chinese populated estate. Naturally, all its Purchasers are Chinese folks who are so Chinese that they don’t speak anything but Mandarin.
You can imagine the field day I had. When I was done explaining the same contract to different CLANS of the Lee/Tan/Lim/Wong families who brought their mother, father, kids, grandmother and great grandpa who actually requested for refreshments during the signing and complained that the room is too cold, I had enough.
So I told the other Minions that I cannot take on the whole estate and that they have got to take on some of the signing themselves. I preached that it is not about your ability to speak the language, it is all the “perception” that they can. I taught them the key Chinese legal terms they need (like “He Tong”) and bade them well.
S, my friend whom I had dinner with last night, told me that she was unlucky enough to be one of the Minions that got sent to a Mandarin-speaking Purchaser after I threw in the reign. Fair enough she did okay with the Chinese legal terms I taught them, but she said I have omitted to teach them the BASIC Chinese words.
Frou: Like what?
S: Like “pets” for example!!!!
So, apparently there was a clause in one of the sale contracts that says that tenants are not allowed to rear pets in the condominium, and S was trying to explain that clause in Mandarin. She ended up saying, “Bu ke yi you “woof-woof” & “meow meow”.
The Minions subsequently came up with a brilliant idea. They did a separation exercise and gathered all the Mandarin-speaking Purchasers and put them all in a conference room. The Librarian woke me up that fateful afternoon and sent me to that conference room.
Till today, I am scarred by the impromptu mass lecture I was forced to conduct in Mandarin. I can still see all their doleful “i-have-no-fucking-idea-what-she-is-talking-about-what-kind-of-law-firm-is-this-and-where-are-our-refreshments” looks in my sleep……
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