Legal Document Translation: Experience and Understanding

NEW YORK - Oct. 1, 2018 - PRLog -- Legal translation into Turkish is a quite delicate process which includes Turkish translation of legal documents such as laws and regulations, power of attorney, court decision, arbitration decision, petition, contract, company establishment documents, patent and trademark applications. There are some features that the translator should have in this process, where the source text is converted to the target Turkish text without causing any errors and ambiguity.

First, the legal translator must have a full command of both the source and the target Turkish language. Compared to other texts, legal texts can be composed of longer and more complex sentences. For example, it is possible to face with a half page sentence while translating a agreement. In such a case, it is necessary that the translator has a full command of both languages to understand the relevant sentence in the source text and to translate the target Turkish text.

Secondly, due to the legal systems differ between countries, the legal translator should know the legal system very well in which both the source text and the target text belong to. A term which belongs to a legal system may not correspond in other legal system. In such a case, legal translator should be eager to explore to find the most exact match.

Thirdly, the legal translator must a full command of the legal terms. This situation is valid for all professional translations. But the point that separates legal translations from other professional translations is, we face the two words which we think have the same meaning and use in our daily life, have different meanings in legal texts. Therefore, it is mandatory to have a full command of legal terms for accurate Turkish translation. At this point, it would be appropriate to have a printed legal terms dictionary and actively use the Internet for research. It can cause irreparable consequences only to use the dictionaries that are accessed over the Internet and not to check on the match whether it is appropriate or not, when legal translating. Another challenging situation for the legal translator is the Arabic and Persian based terms used extensively in Turkish legal texts. It is possible to obtain a annotated print legal terms dictionary again or to refer to reliable sources such as online legal dictionary of the Ministry of Justice.

The most important point to make a qualified legal translation by using the above-mentioned features effectively is experience. Translating legal texts without having experience in legal translation can cause serious consequences for both the translator and the respective parties. For example, let's consider the commercial agreement between a company operating in Russia and a company operating in Turkey. This agreement was prepared in Russian and translated into English by a Russian translator. This English text may contain grammatically incorrect or ambiguous sentences. We are expected to translate this English text into Turkish (http://www.turklingua.com/turkish-translate/legal-transla...). At this point, an experienced legal translator because he translated similar texts before, will have less difficulty in. But an inexperienced translator will have a much higher possibility of making mistakes. I believe that experience is the most important and unifying element in legal translation because of these and similar reasons. I think that the best way to gain experience is to translate under supervision in a legal office or a translation office focused on legal translation for a certain period and to examine legal texts on both the source and the target language.

Hope not to lose the spirit of patience and the researcher spirit that you ought to have to be a good legal translator.

Turklingua (http://www.turklingua.com/) is very happy for that seven of our blue-chip ten customers in the law business have been working together with us for more than five years- for they trust that the legal translation service we render is unparalleled in its accuracy, caliber, distinction and speed.
Our respected past performance of more than two decades' experience in translating for the law business implies you can have no doubt that your materials will be handled by Turkish translators who understand well the document business area needs.