6 Steps on How to Do Legal Document Translation

The need to translate legal documents might come highly unexpected, and when it does, there may also not be enough time to do that well. Still, such situations occur quite often, especially when you do business internationally. That’s why it’s essential to remember how it’s done properly, not miss a thing, and ensure the quality of every detail. This task can be challenging. Still, a few certain ways can guarantee the best results possible at a relatively low cost.

Taking It Professionally

One of the golden rules of doing something that influences our lives is to take it seriously and professionally. That means that you can measure the results, one way or another. At the same time, you must know about every detail of such a process and be able to set the deadlines and make sure that they are complied with.

Controlling everything is hard, no matter what process is being in question. With legal documents translation, this process becomes even harder as the task itself is not the easiest one. There are lots of factors to consider and, if you take a look at this online translation services review, you’ll see that even some long-time professional translators find it challenging. According to these experts, here are a few aspects that must be considered when you have your legal documents translated.

1. Minimize the involvement of machine translation. While it can be an extremely cost-effective solution and even come for free, it’s not worth trusting your documents purely to the translation software. Of course, it can be involved to some degree, but the specialist working on legal translation must handle the main task themselves. Only some basic terminology can be trusted to machine translation, and the result still has to be proofread by the language specialist.
2. Composing and stating the task clearly and fully. The text of your task must be composed so that it can’t contain any second guesses or cause any doubts. While most professional and certified translators work honestly, they are not responsible for any instructions that can be interpreted in several ways. So, make sure to state the required languages and dialects for translation clearly, provide what terminology is to be used, and what is the purpose of your translation as clearly as possible.
3. Finding the right specialist. There are lots of translators that specialize in document translation. Still, they can be good only at certain documents, translations, or languages. So, before you hire a translator, make sure to look through their portfolio or review. In case if none are available, ask all questions that might interest you directly.
4. Monitor the process. It may seem like a bothering thing to do, but it’s quite a normal part of the process. Checking in from time to time and asking whether it’s ready won’t do any good. Still, requesting the completed portion of work can. It will show the progress that was already completed and the specialist’s approach to the job.
5. Scanning and proofreading the translation. This part might be the trickiest To ensure that all your instructions have been followed, you must check whether everything is translated correctly the way you requested. But you might not be a language expert, so you’ll need help here. The best and cheapest way to check the quality of translation is to use machine translation. If the human expert did everything right, machine back translation would be very close to the originals you provided.
6. Working with revisions. This is rather an additional stage, yet it might occur pretty often. A typo here, a style error there, and there’s a need to review the whole work to make sure every detail is in its proper place and in the right condition. So, be prepared to restate the original instructions, keep calm, and remember that revisions are a normal part of the process.

Controlling Professionally

As you have your legal documents translated, it’s likely done for a serious purpose. So, keep in mind, just as the translation has to be approached professionally by a corresponding expert, the quality of that translation must be checked by you similarly. Controlling other people can be challenging indeed, especially when you have lots of other things to take care of. Still, it’s an essential process that has to be taken and approached seriously.