Wu Language Services in the UK

About Our Wu Services

Wu is one of the major groups of Chinese, spoken in the Yangtze River Delta across Shanghai, most of Zhejiang province and southern Jiangsu, with speaker estimates around 80 million. Shanghainese is its best-known variety, but the group also takes in the speech of Suzhou, Hangzhou, Ningbo and Wenzhou, the last so divergent that other Wu speakers find it hard to follow. Wu is notable among Chinese varieties for keeping the voiced consonants that most others lost, giving it a distinctive soft sound often remarked on in China. It is tonal, written with Chinese characters, and not mutually intelligible with Mandarin. Decades of Mandarin-medium schooling mean younger city dwellers increasingly speak Mandarin first, and the preservation of Shanghainese has become a topic of public discussion in Shanghai.

Prism Linguistics provides Wu translation, interpreting and transcription across the UK in 300+ languages. Whether you need a certified document for the Home Office, a court interpreter, an NHS appointment or a business meeting, our vetted native-speaker linguists are ready to help.