by Mollie Peters

1. Specialized Legal Knowledge

Specialized legal knowledge is essential to delivery of superior legal document translation. This is also true for many other disciplines in translation, but in the legal field, years of study are required in order to circumvent costly mistakes. This is why many of the legal translators I have encountered in my career have either practiced law, studied the law, or published in the legal field.

2. Liability

With legal texts, there is simply no room for error. Too much is at stake. The smallest of errors can have very serious consequences and can be very expensive for the client. Horror stories abound about what has happened in a courtroom when a document was published with a critical error in it. For instance, in Motion Fitness vs. Changzhou Yingcai Metalwork Fitness Equipment, the indefinite article “a” was translated in each instance in the Chinese version of the patent claims to “one” – a specific numerical value. This narrowed the scope of protection in the claims and wound up fatally undermining the plaintiff’s case.

Errors can and do, of course, happen in other specialized translation work, but there is a higher bar for exactitude for legal translation. Many legal documents must be able to stand up to the scrutiny of a courtroom judge and the questions of a prosecutor. They must leave no room for doubt in anyone’s mind. That is a high standard and why so much care must be taken. This is also why reputable translation companies and reputable
legal translators carry large amounts of liability insurance.

3. Cross-cultural Challenges

First some history. Legal systems came out of the societies in which they were founded, as need and circumstances arose. In other words, the law and legal language of a country reflect the overarching legal system, which in turn reflects the history, culture and evolution of the country.

Culture → Systems → Concepts → Language → Terms

In other words, two different cultures might be protecting against very different and mutually exclusive harms and offenses. Because the law is so culturally embedded in the mores of a country, any two legal systems might be quite incongruous. For example, the term “habeas corpus” is used in English and American legal systems and nowhere else in the world, throwing up problems when translating into any other language.

Therefore, finding compatibilities and matches in how the law is expressed is of the highest challenge to translators. They must understand the two systems they are dealing with and how they coalesce, without being tripped up by “false friends”, those words that look alike, but have different meanings. Translators must recognize not only how the two languages can reflect the same meaning despite cultural differences, but how and where the legal concepts deviate between cultures.

4. Dealing with Conceptual Differences

In resolving conceptual differences, legal translators will be wrestling, not so much with wording, but with making concepts cohere in meaning between cultures. Legal concepts will differ essentially, depending on how differently any two countries evolved. How does one transfigure concepts from the source text into the language and conceptual understanding of the target text? How does the translator bridge the difference between a legal system based on Confucianism, say, and one based on a parliamentary system? Between a culture with thousands of years of legal system development and another with a newly emergent legal system based on tribal law? While bridging the conceptual differences between the legal systems of France and the United States might not be as difficult, those between the United States and Saudi Arabia might be extraordinarily challenging.

And out of these disparate legal systems flow all the business agreements, declarations of rights, the contracts, regulatory documents, etc. that control commercial life. How does one express something when the concepts do not exist in that language? This is where the legal translator must first research and understand the concept and make sure the concept is re-expressed using available words. It requires a lot of experience and a deep understand of both the language and the culture, as well as the art of cross-cultural translation. A good legal translation captures the stylized language of the law, but it must absolutely capture the concepts!

5. Cost

Translating old sciences like medicine, accounting, and the law tend to cost more because:

• A higher investment in specialized knowledge and educational levels is required on the part of the translator
• The language can be arcane and highly stylized. The language of a patent, for instance, must be in a very exact form, to the point that some translators who become proficient specialize only in patents; the same applies to financial statements
• The demand is high and the supply of excellent translators is low. As explained above, cultural differences between the societies of the two languages makes the translation task more arduous. Legal translators with relevant legal and cultural experience add value in efficiency and accuracy.
• Machine translation is normally not applicable
• Disparities between cultures are less shared in these older disciplines of medicine, law, and accounting.

Medicine is the least costly of the three because over the decades so much medical information and procedures have been shared back and forth between countries (cultures). In contrast, legal and accounting systems have remained mostly localized to their particular countries and thus undergone fewer changes.

Should lawyers be engaged to translate or review translated documents?

In an ideal world, maybe. But at the cost of even an hour of an attorney’s time, it would make translation prohibitive. And lawyers are not trained for such a job. They are versed in their native legal language, but usually not other legal systems. Legal translators, with their training and experience in cross-cultural legal systems, solve the problem at a lower cost.