Holly Snape, translator, Central Compilation and Translation Bureau. [Photo provided to China Daily]

But she didn't reveal the date on which she first received a copy of the speech.

This was the first time since 1978 that foreigners were involved with the translation of such a confidential report before its release, according to State broadcaster China Global Television Network.

Snape doesn't know if her story would draw more qualified foreign translators to China but the mostly behind-the-scenes work itself is interesting and challenging.

"When I first came to China I realized very quickly I needed to speak Chinese if I wanted to understand China, to understand the culture－it is not just about the language, it's everything underneath it," she says, adding that without knowledge of Chinese, achieving genuine communication with local people becomes difficult.

Snape did a basic Chinese course when she was pursuing her master's degree in East Asian Studies at the University of Bristol but started to pick up the language after moving to Guangzhou to learn about social organizations in China at Sun Yat-sen University in 2007 as part of her postgraduate program.

In the capital of Guangdong province, where many people speak Cantonese, she made friends from all over China, including with migrant workers, she says.

Her Mandarin gradually built up.

A couple of years later she finally came to Beijing for her PhD. Initially a visiting student from Bristol at Tsinghua University, where she met her future husband, Snape has since lived in the Chinese capital. Her 2-year-old son speaks better Chinese－in an Anhui dialect－than English, she says.

Her curiosity about China was aroused by exposure to Chinese art and visits to British museums and to Hong Kong, primarily during her childhood and teens. Her mother was a schoolteacher and her father did an office job, and the family was vegetarian and didn't own a car out of concern for the environment, says Snape, whose Chinese name is Taoli.

"I come from a very ordinary family."