There are lots of things in the world that call for extreme precision, sincerity and experience. Legal documents translation is essentially one of those. Laws usually have specific language terminologies. Simply speaking, legal translation tends to be an extremely culture-dependent field. Virtually all translators agree on the fact that legal translation is no matter of joke.
Thus this remains a field for highly trained professionals only. Today, there are many translators around the world who specialise in different aspects of legal documents translation. They’re dedicatedly serving various fields with their experienced translations of legal documents, along with their scholarly writings. Take, for instance, a case of mistranslation within a single clause of a contract…you cannot even imagine how easily this ends up in lawsuits or financial/goodwill losses.
As a professional translates clauses or pages in legal fields, he or she must remember a couple of things.
Any text that you get to translate essentially belongs to a specific (and probably a unique) legal system or culture. That means the source document or text is vastly influenced by the specific culture or origin it belongs to. No legal document in the world is free from the reflection of a particular tone of legal language.
In the same way, your target text needs to be read (and understood) by a person who is accustomed to a much different legal system or legal culture. Same is true about the language of the target text. The majority of modern legal writing or contracts, aim to establish visibly defined rights or obligations for some other individuals.
It’s also essential that there is flawless and effective correspondence of such rights or obligations between that source text and its translation. However, legal translation might as well involve critical parameters like Certificates of Accuracy or Witness Statements.
Along those lines, some legal translations deal in Depositions, Trusts or Wills. Mammoth skills are required on the part of the translator, when it comes to Articles of Incorporation, or Litigation Docs. A significant chunk of legal documents translation work in the world is centered on Immigration Documents and Property/Exhibit Labels.
These translations are tied with many people’s lives and wellbeing since, in some instances, the translator is required to attend court hearings. And besides these terminological lacunae and lexical gaps, a translator might have to focus on many additional sensitive aspects.