Everything You Need to Know about Legal Translations

08th Nov 2021

Legal translations refer to the translations in the field of law. It encompasses the translation of all documents that regularize and legitimize all legal transactions and relationships. It also involves the translation of necessary legal documents amongst international law specialists around the globe.

What Does It Require?

Legal translations require translators that either have a legal background, or some sort of certification that proves their expertise in legal language, along with the specific language that they are translating. It can also involve a paralegal, attorney or a lawyer.

Legal translators must have experience in translating numerous kinds of legal documents. This can include contracts, depositions, court and witness transcripts, confidentiality agreements, written and audio court evidences, policies, complaints, regulatory transcriptions, legal disclaimers, and much more.

As you can see, the job of a legal translator can very diverse and wide-ranging. It all depends on their command over the legal language, or “legalese”. The fact that this type of language has to be on par with the legal adequacies of another language, it makes the job of legal translators to be one the difficult jobs in the world.

Legalese

Just as any other language, legalese is just another language, spoken between law practitioners and operators to work out a legal operation. This language is distinguishable in all languages, and every different language of the world requires a legally trained person to speak, understand and interpret this language.

This is why legal translation is such a specialized field. The legal translators do not only require having prowess in a particular foreign language, but they also need to have legal training.  Along with that, they also must have sufficient knowledge of the laws of their country.

High Stake Translations

When translating a legal document, you cannot just interpret it word for word. This is because a legal document involves many terminologies that may have a different meaning in the context of law. Moreover, they may also have different implications.

Thus, it is crucial for a translator to understand all the legal implications of what is being translated. A client must be equipped with a legal translator that provides the accurate and precise translation.  If there are any inadequacies and inaccuracies in the translation, then the client can suffer dire consequences.

The legal stake of misinterpreting legal document is incredibly high, which emphasizes the value the value of legal translators. Since some legal documents are responsible for dictating rights and properties, an improperly translated legal document may even alter the initial decision of rights, liberties and properties.

Business Proposals

If you want to make business proposal to potential foreign client or another business, then hiring a translation agency that offers you a team of legal translators can be extremely useful. This is because you want to make sure that your proposal stays within the legal confines of that particular country. Businesses that count on legal translators are therefore very successful in their efforts of foreign integration.

Legal Formatting

Every country tends to format their legal documents in different ways. When formatting a particular document, you use the same format as the original file. Nonetheless, whenever there are differences between the language of the two files then they will also have differences in the formatting and numbering of files.

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, legal translators are professionals that have a very meticulous job of analyzing and interpreting a legal document and then representing the same clause and explanation of that document in another language. In this effort, they have to maintain the same tone, idiomatic expressions, original thought and legal intentions of the document.

 Not to mention, their translation should be flawless and free of grammatical errors. This technical and articulate job sometimes requires a team of translators and lawyers to rectify a thorough and detailed foreign legal document. Legal translators need to also have the diligent researching skills as well. Hence, this line of work is very specialized and unique.