Translations in the United States

Translations for Legal Advice

By Ted Stroll. He is a San Jose lawyer who also works as a translator

The State Department’s (take an) error last year in translating the label on a symbolic gift, a red plastic “reset” button that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave to her Russian counterpart to signal a redirection in U.S.-Russian relations. Instead, the label read “peregruzka,” which means overloaded.

In a recent case in Canada, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission held that a contract’s English text meant a party could cancel at any time during the agreement’s five-year term, provided the other party received one year’s advance notice.

The losing party then unearthed the French version of the contract (which under Canadian law is accorded equal dignity) and noticed a subtle difference. A petition for rehearing followed, and the commission withdrew its prior ruling, concluding that the English version was ambiguous but that the French version plainly permitted cancellation only one year before the term ended. The failure to notice the difference was worth between $1 million and $2.13 million in Canadian dollars.

And that, in a nutshell, is why it is important to hire a good translator.

These services can be expensive, whether you retain the translator directly or through an organization. Given the cost, it is not surprising that a law firm might be tempted to rely on an in-house employee who grew up speaking Spanish or who majored in Japanese in college. And then there are free translation utilities online, such as Google Translate (www.translate.google.com). But relying on low-cost resources is a dangerous game. Even Bing, Microsoft’s free online translation utility (www.microsofttranslator.com), warns: “Automatic translation can help you understand the gist of the translated text but is no substitute for a professional human translator.” How true.

Similarly, your colleague who learned Portuguese during missionary service in Brazil may not know that celebrar could mean to enter into or solemnize a contract instead of to celebrate, that a concordata may be a form of insolvency rather than an agreement, or that the Procuradoria-Geral da República is the Public Prosecution Service, not the National Procurement Office. Another colleague who majored in French literature may not know that traitement can mean “salary” as well as “treatment.” She may not recognize partenaires sociaux as euphemistic Eurospeak for labor unions with which your client is at odds, rather than a chummy reference to Facebook friends.

A good translator not only knows these things, but also has a librarian’s research skills. The translator will, for example, understand the intricacies of Spanish surnames and be able to competently search the Internet to translate mysterious acronyms.

Never rely on a translator for legal advice. Bear in mind that a lack of specialized legal knowledge limits even the best translators. In Brazilian law, the aforementioned concordata has been replaced by a newer procedure called recuperação, which is akin to a Chapter 11 reorganization. (A related procedure called falência is similar to a Chapter 7 proceeding.) For international matters it is usually best to consult with local counsel and a good translator.

Professional associations are a potentially helpful resource. The American Translators Association has databases of both translation services and ATA-certified translators (atanet.org/onlinedirectories).

Resources

See Also

• Foreign Law Translations (Institute for Transnational Law)
• Translations: Lawyer
• Transcripts in the American Legal Encyclopedia
• Universal Copyright Convention as revised at Paris
• Translation
• Patent Cooperation Treaty; with Regulations
• Spanish Dictionary

Further Reading

• Information about Translations in the Gale Encyclopedia of American Law.