Legal translation services – a unique blend of law and linguistics

A unique blend of law and linguistics – legal translation services- is a highly complex and specialized field manned by Subject Matter Experts (SME). It is the process of converting the source language of a legal text with the language of the target jurisdiction. As the law is culture-specific, legal translation heavily depends on the target region's socio-cultural and judicial settings. Therefore, rather than word-to-word transposing, legal translation is a contextual procedure that is riddled with ambiguities, gaps and loud silences that have to be understood by the legal translator. In addition, numerous texts like transcripts, identification documents, patents, amendments, litigations, proceedings, etc., require legal translation.

Legal translation services – challenges and difficulties

Legal translators have to be highly cautious of the country’s civil, criminal and commercial laws while working on legalese. One aspect that makes legal translation very unique is confidentiality. Often, strict regulations bound the translator to maintain secrecy around the document that they are translating. Let us look at some of the difficulties that surround legal translation services.

1. Law is a very sensitive domain wherein terms have particularized meanings. Legal terminologies between the source jurisdiction and target jurisdiction often vary widely.

2. Legal systems are a reflection of the country’s socio-cultural setup. The legal translator must understand the cultural differences between the legal structures of two diverse societies and be mindful while handling the nuances.

3. A legal translator has to have intense knowledge of the law and languages of various nations. This is a rare combination and difficult to find.

4. Legal styles vary from the judiciary to judiciary. Thus, the translator must fit into the narrative of both the source language and target language.

5. Linguistic gaps are a common phenomenon in legal translation. For example, habeas corpus is a term that exists only in the UK and the USA, and in other countries like India, its meaning is entirely altered.

Unlike other translation types like website translation services, legal translation is complicated, and the degrees of difficulty vary from context to context. For example, it may be easy to translate American legalese into UK legalese because both nations have secular laws. But, countries are governed by religious laws, which make the translation process more challenging.