How do you translate ***等人, where *** is a name? I know that 等人 literally means "et al." but that doesn't fit the context. For example, we know that five people: John, Bob, Amy, Robert and Peter were expected to come to a certain place at say 7 o'clock, then they arrived in time. The CN phrase is 约翰等人及时赶到了, which means "John, Bob, Amy, Robert and Peter arrived in time". But the 等人 is translated by listing all the names. What's the equivalent of 等人 in EN?
You could try either "John's group", "John's gang", "John's bunch" or maybe "John and company" or "John and friends". Assuming John is the most important / dominant / senior person in that group.
等 basically means 'etc.' In Chinese, it can be followed by a word to define what category the etc. refers to (people, colors, objects, whatever). Since 'etc.' and 'et al.' are less frequently used in a normal English sentence, it is best to translate the term depending on the context. In this case, something like 'John and the others arrived on time.' If these people can be further grouped somehow (for example, if they are friends, or candidates for an interview, or something else), I would recommend using that in the translation (ex.: 'John and the other candidates arrived on time.')