In recent years, there has been a heated discussion as to the quality of English education in mainland China. The central argument has been that, although children begin to learn English at the age of ten, and continue the study throughout their education, when they communicate with English native speakers they have difficulties both in understanding and in making themselves understood. English native speakers may also have difficulty understanding them, for reasons that include direct translation from Chinese into English, especially as regards everyday Chinese administrative and technical terms. This paper analyses this problem in terms of both vocabulary acquisition and translation.