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With the internet becoming ubiquitous and every corner and culture of the world accepting the digital era with alacrity, the use of translation for making a business successful is no longer a hidden secret. In developing countries like India, 90% of the local people prefer browsing the Internet in their local language and thus, you need to have the power of translation to get the expected results.
But not every translation service offered by professional companies out it is similar since some translation services are more challenging than others. And one of the most challenging translation services offered by only professional and certified translation companies is legal document translation.
To translate a legal document from English to Spanish or any other language, translators require knowledge of both the legal world and the translation landscape, and not every translator possesses such vast knowledge.
To make you understand the complexities of legal document translation, we have listed some points that make legal translation an arduous task.
The process
Translation of a simple document from English to Spanish is already a complicated process that requires a specific set of skills. However, translating any type of legal document make things more challenging as the ramification of even the smallest mistake can involve a lengthy, complicated and frustrating process, not to forget the financial burden it will bring along.
There are many things that need to be kept in mind by any translator while dealing with a legal document. For example, the source text is crafted to comply with the legal system that conforms only to its own culture and legal language. But here, the target text will be read by someone else and from the perspective of his own legal system and language.
Maintaining a high level of precision while converting a legal document from the source text to the target text is of uttermost importance and there is no way you can overlook it. Also, translators need to keep in mind that the linguistic structure of the source text might not be relevant when it comes to the target text.
The most difficult form of translation
Even when you ask a translator, he will keep legal document translation on the top of the list of most challenging translation processes. Whether a translator is dealing with technical translation or marketing translation, there is nothing that even comes close to legal translation in terms of difficulty level and this is why legal document translation services are offered by experienced and dedicated translating companies only.
It is the legal terminologies that make legal translation a tougher job because every country out there has its own set of legal terminologies and if you are offering legal document translation services then you have to abide by those terminologies.
Translator requirements
There are three specific fields in which every legal translator should have proper expertise; knowledge of the legal terminologies of both the source language and the target language, competency in writing the target language, and an exceptional understanding of the source language. Words like word-to-word translation become meaningless in the world of official document translation services for the legal world.
This is the main reason why anyone dealing with official document translation services for the legal world should be both; a legal and linguistic expert. There is a vast amount of research that needs to be done by the legal translator to decode the source legal paper and then translate it into the target legal language with 100% perfection and not every translator out there has the skill, patience, and expertise to deal with it.
Legal barriers
The main thing that needs be to kept in mind while handling a legal document translation project is the time of delivery. There is always a strict deadline in the legal field and when the court says you have to present a legal document on a specific date, they really mean it. Failing to do so can put you in a lot of trouble and apart from financial losses, you might have to deal with legal consequences as well.
Even lawyers, who regularly deal with the international should be presented with legal documents that are 100% accurate because lawyers aren’t linguistic experts and they will build their case, appeal, or any other process around the legal document presented before them. They don’t think whether the legal document is accurately translated or not.
It is your responsibility as a client to make sure that the legal document has been translated through a professional translation service provider and that every single word written in the legal paper is a mirror image of the source text.
If you are scouring the internet for legal translation services then you must spend some more time on research and analysis as legal translation services are the toughest translation services and the company offering it should have dedicated legal translator service providers.
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