Expertise in Legal Translation: A Field Demanding High-quality Work | Translation Agency Blog

As business becomes increasingly global, there are more frequent interactions with overseas countries and enterprises, which results in a growing demand for translations of legal documents such as contracts and application forms.

Translations of legal documents with important contents or for important purposes must be of the highest quality. In addition to being accurate, such translations must serve as legally valid documents in the country they are intended for.

Here is a brief description of expertise in legal translation, a field demanding more than linguistic skills.

Overseas business development or expansion inevitably requires legal documents such as contracts. Take contracts for instance: different types of contract documents - including agency/distributorship agreements, license agreements, intellectual property agreements, and lease agreements - can be needed, depending on business requirements. Besides contract documents, articles of incorporation, minutes of shareholder meetings, company rules and such also have to be translated. Moreover, additional legal translations will be required from time to time at various junctures in the course of overseas business development.

To facilitate business development overseas, it is important to respond promptly to those needs for legal translations.

Normally, professional translators have certain fields of specialization where they have a competitive advantage, such as law, healthcare, machinery, and content. Every field of specialization has key requirements and characteristics. The variety of expressions allowed for translation of contracts and other legal documents is limited compared with other fields of translation. This is because any law is written using strictly defined terms to ensure that everybody who reads it interprets it in the same way.

Knowledge of consistently used expressions is essential for legal translation. Take the English word "agreement" for instance. There are quite a few Japanese equivalents for the word, including "dōi," "gōi," "keiyaku," "keiyakusho," "sashiiresho," and "shōdaku." It is necessary to choose the most appropriate equivalent on a case-by-case basis. Correctly understanding the source text and translating it into the target language based on specified definitions is a task that can only be performed by translators who have both knowledge and experience in the field of law.