Legal translation services: an important, critical and delicate business. Why is that? Well, let’s say someone is translating a document related to cosmetic products and somehow instead of “balm for dry hair” they translate – let me see – “dandruff shampoo”. Will someone’s hair suffer from that? It probably would. But that’s not the end of the world, is it?

Kidding aside, to manage a legal document is a very thorny task and definitely not all translators can handle it. There are various levels of difficulty and clients should always be sure that the people they hire for a legal translation service know what they are doing. This is one of those translation fields in which what they could seem high rates, especially to someone who does not belong to the business, are actually reasonable, if we consider the implications.

Let’s try to be a bit more specific: certificate translation (birth, death, marriage, etc.) appear to be among the simplest to handle. That’s true, in a way, because the language range is minimal. Nevertheless, even the tiniest mistake could cause major problems: what about a translated visa carrying typos or misspelled words or names? In this case, though, a translator with some years of experience and good eye to detail can produce a quality translated document, even if they haven’t got a specialisation in legal translation.

Contracts, on the other hand, seem to go way further than that. Professional human translation (actually, according to me, the only translation method to be considered) is fundamental when it comes to the business world, especially when legal or business decisions are made based on some translated documents.

So, basically, the most important thing to consider when legal, financial or official documents are translated from a language to the other is the following: making sure that what is written won’t put in an awkward position or – even worse – destroy the professional image of someone. One badly translated sentence in a key document and the damage can be incalculable. The translator, moreover, needs to be an intercultural expert. Legal systems exist independently from the legal languages they use and are created through social and political circumstances. The legal translator carries out a double task: to translate into a different language and in a different legal system. It is not just a matter of words: sometimes different legal systems often work with institutions which are not comparable, for example when it comes to Common Law systems and continental systems.

One last thing to consider is the following: who will read such legal translated documents? Someone who understands law: a lawyer, a judge, a magistrate, a company attorney, for example. To make them read a poorly translated document is definitely something that has to be avoided.

A bad legal translation can turn into a funny joke, an annoyance, a problem, a catastrophe. When it comes to legal translation it can easily turn into, at least, a major problem.

The dictionary tells us that contracts are “agreements between two or more parties, especially one that is written and enforceable by law”. When it comes to law, it’s better not to leave any stone unturned and be much more than precise and accurate.

There is only maybe one field when mistakes can cause more problems: the medical field. But this is another story, which will be covered next time.