Some advice from the legal translator of the KLS Agency
Some advice from the legal translator of the KLS Agency
Legal translation is one of the most challenging sectors of the translation domain. Where there's a lack of qualification, horrific errors may happen even at high-level international negotiations. A widely-known example is the failure of a free trade agreement between the EU and South Korea in 2011 because of poor translation. 207 translation errors were initially found in its Korean version, including “transfusion” instead of “transplantation”, or “skin care service” instead of “epidemiology”, and many more were found later. Finally, the Korean Trade Ministry opted for drafting a completely new document instead of trying to correct all the mistakes in its previous version.
Should you have any doubts about whether the translator/interpreter or the agency you have chosen is qualified enough to deal with legal texts, or, say, interpret in court, try to test their command of legal vocabulary and understanding of legal systems.
If legal translation into English is involved, you may test whether the translator is aware of the difference between two simple words, “jail” and “prison” (jail is a place for the confinement of people awaiting trial or those convicted of minor crimes, while prison is a place for keeping individuals serving punishments of over one year), or between “crime” (an offence in general), “misdemeanour" (not severe crime) and "felony" (a crime of high seriousness). If the test is successfully passed, you may want to add "an icing to the cake" by asking them whether they know what such legalese as “limited divorce” or “indeterminate sentence” means.
Many people today misuse machine translation tools. In 2018, the Argentinian football club Independiente decided to get back Bryan Cabezas, who was then playing with the Italian Atalanta club. They prepared a contract and just got it machine-translated, instead of asking professionals to do the job. The result? They failed. Cabezas stayed with the Italian club simply because the software mistranslated his name into “Bryan Heads”, as “cabeza” means “head” in Spanish. To avoid this trap, ask the translator or agency to be provided with some translation samples and have them scanned against the use of AI tools.
Once you've chosen an agency, make an effort to ensure the translation meets your expectations. Let it be aware of your format preferences. If you have your own professional glossary be sure to provide it too. If you have samples of successful translations made for you, submit them so that the translator may take note of them. The more cooperation is on your part, the better the chances you'll get the translation meeting all your needs.
If you opt to work with us, KLS agency will find you a qualified translator/interpreter, who will make sure legal terms perfectly match each other in both source and target languages, be it a court hearing, notarisation or any other legal procedure.