I am a US lawyer and I have a client currently incarcerated in local jail. She can't speak any english and I am trying to determine what type of chinese she speaks so I can get the right type of interpreter. I asked her to write the city she is from in china and her name down on a piece of paper (see img above).

Would someone please tell me in english what this says and the most likely chinese dialect spoken by this woman?

Thanks you and feel free to comment or email me.

She talking about this city.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tieling
In this province
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liaoning

Seems like Mandarin is the best choice? I think everyone speaks some form of mandarin, although I have no idea what dialect she speaks so up north.

Her name is 姜海的? That's kind of a weird name with 的 as part of it.

Thank you VERY much. That is of considerable help to me!

It isn't "的", but the Simplified Chinese for "Li", i.e. "beautiful". Her name is Jiang Hai Li. Hth!

her name is 姜 海 丽 and is from 中國遼寧省 Laoning Province, China. the remaining 3 character is the city as evident by the character 市 for city . Laoning is in northern China, major dialect spoken is Mandarin.

get any mandarin speaker that knows how to write chinese just in case if she doesn't speak mandarin.