Legal translation is a translation of texts pertaining to law and intended for the exchange of legal information between people speaking different languages. Since any law is inherently associated with social, political and cultural features of any specific country, legal translation is a complex task. For adequate communication of relevant legal information the translation must be precise, meaningful and true to the original. For this reason legal translation is often viewed as a type of technical translation. Legal translation is our main specialization.
Legal translation comprises the translation of:
- laws, regulations, legislation
- contracts and agreements
- affidavits, expert reports, memorandums
- court orders, notices, witness statements, statements of claim
- apostilles, notarial deeds
- incorporation documents, statutes
- powers of attorney
- certificates, references, passports, ID cards
Only highly qualified linguists with experience in legal translation should translate legal documents. Legal translators commonly have a legal and/or linguistic background plus extensive experience in translation of legal documents.
Specific features of legal translation
Legal translation is commonly viewed as one of the most complex types of translation work because it requires rather deep knowledge in such areas as the international law, civil law, criminal law, copyright law, matrimonial law, etc. Any inconsistency, inadequate or loose translation are inadmissible in legal translation. To ensure high quality legal translation the translator should have sufficient knowledge of law and sufficient work experience with such documents. The greatest challenge probably is the fact that legal terminology reflects specific, peculiar features of the legal system in a specific country, therefore the same term in different languages may have different connotations.
Inadequate translation of a legal text may have serious consequences and the problem is not only in the terminology. For instance, English legal documents often feature highly specific legal lexis, the so-called legalese, abbreviations, specific wording, etc. A truly qualified and experienced linguist should know these pitfalls and should possess the linguistic means and the know-how to successfully cope with such issues.
Our experience
We have over 17-years’ experience in legal translation. Lingo S Translation Bureau was one of the first in Latvia which started to provide translation of official documents of the European Union and its institutions into Latvian language in 2003, yet before Latvia officially joined EU. And this is an on-going work for us. Apart from translating from English into Latvian we translate official documents of Latvian authorities into English. During these years we have translated over 50 000 pages of various EU-related documents and build up a team of highly skilled and capable professional translators, editors, and revisers.
We have obtained extensive experience in translation of court and litigation documents from English and French into Russian, Latvian and Ukrainian languages, as well as from these languages into English, including court orders, notices, legal forms, statements of claim, witness statements, expert reports, memorandums, submissions, etc. We are well aware that such documents often need immediate attention and urgent translation, sometimes overnight or over a weekend, and we do our best to meet the toughest deadlines and expectations. Use of TM (Translation Memories), extensive range of on-line and in-house glossaries and terminological resources allow us to produce consistent and terminologically verified legal content in the target language. Our priorities in legal translation are the impeccable quality and strict confidentiality.
Major language combinations
English/French into Russian/Ukrainian/Latvian/Lithuanian/Estonian