English-language advisers sitting a Taipei process often receive a Mandarin CIM first and a translation second. The translation is usually polite. Polite translations flatten related-party footnotes and turn capacity figures into round numbers that look like they came from a Western CIM template. Cross-Border Mandate Literacy spends a session on reading both versions on the same table.
Capacity is a frequent false friend. A plant “designed for” a tonnage is not a plant that has run that tonnage with the current shift pattern, the current environmental permit, and the current customer mix. Mandarin marketing copy may use 產能 in a way that an English CIM would split into nameplate, demonstrated, and contracted. If you only read the English, you will write a synergy claim on a number that was never operational.
Related-party sales hide in familiar places: leasing of dormitories, purchase of scrap, and “technical service” paid to a shareholder’s other company. The Chinese footnote may be longer and more specific. The English footnote may say “immaterial.” Immaterial to whom? In studio we make students copy the Chinese list into the issue list even when the English CIM buries it, then mark which items need a map rather than a sentence.
Customer names are another trap. A CIM may list “international brands” without saying whether the contract is with the brand, a Taiwan trading company, or a distributor who can be replaced. The Mandarin version sometimes names the intermediary. The English version sometimes does not, because someone thought it looked more impressive. Impressive is not a diligence category.
You do not need to be a literary translator. You need a bilingual colleague who will sit still while you point at a paragraph and ask “is this the same claim?” If the answer is “more or less,” treat it as two claims until someone proves otherwise. More or less is how IC decks acquire confidence they have not earned.