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Legal & Sworn Translations

We offer legal translations of a variety of documents pertaining to international law, family law, labour law, antitrust and trade regulations, immigration law, consumer protection, intellectual property, employer and employee rights, business issues, medical malpractice, bankruptcy matters,...

Document types

Legal and court documents: summons and complaints, judicial proceedings, articles of incorporation, power of attorney, evidentiary documents, contracts, leases, patents, legal correspondance, licenses, expert reports, litigation documents,...

Personal documents: birth certificates, marriage certificates, certificates of good character, proof of domicile, certificates of origin, residence permits, college degree certificates and diplomas,...

All translations of official documents are performed by a sworn translator (Court of First Instance in Leuven, Antwerp, Brussels or Liège).

Challenges of legal translation

In addition to the cultural, linguistic, and terminological problems that all technical translators have to deal with, the legal translator is faced with specific challenges, which makes this job interesting, but also particularly demanding.

The challenge basically emanates from the fact that there often exist no target equivalents for legal terms or concepts in the source text. For example, legal institutions, judicial systems, and courtroom procedures often vary considerably from one country to the other. Specifically, the legal translator must beware of co-called "false friends", i.e. terms that are similar in the source and target language, but carry a different meaning in both languages.

Finally, the legal translator must also be a well-versed general technical translator, as the documents he or she is presented with often also pertain to a technical subject matter (e.g. patent litigations, medical malpractice lawsuits, court expert reports).

Customers

Customers of our legal translation services include Belgian and international law firms, legal departments of corporations operating in regulated industries, as well as individuals and expatriates preparing a dossier for work or study abroad.

Pricing

Legal translations start at 0.12 € per source word for the language combinations English into and from Dutch, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. This price is indicative; simply mail or fax us your document(s) to get a free estimate. Needless to say, all documents you send us for quotation purposes will be treated with utmost confidentiality. When ordering a legal translation, please state the purpose that the translated document will serve.

Bibliography

• Bucholtz, Mary. (1993). "Language in Evidence: The Pragmatics of Translation in the Courtroom." Paper read at symposium about language and society (SALSA), Austin, TX, April 1993. University of California at Berkely, Dept. of Linguistics
• Dunnigan, T., & Downing, B. (1995). "Legal interpreting on trial." Morris, M. (Ed.) Translation and the law. (pp. 93-114.) Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
• Garner, Bryan A. (2001). "Legal Writing in Plain English: A Text With Exercises." The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-28418-2
• Goodrich, Peter. (1987). "Legal Discourse: Studies in Linguistics, Rhetoric and Legal Analysis". St. Martin's Press
• Katz, Alan N. ed. (1986). "Legal Traditions and Systems: An International Handbook". Greenwood Press.
• Mellinkoff, David. (1963). "The Language of the Law". Little, Brown & Co.
• Rieber, Robert and William A. Stewart, eds. (1990). "The Language Scientist as Expert in the Legal Setting: Issues in Forensic Linguistics". New York Academy of Sciences.
• Shuy, Roger. (1993). "Language Crimes: The Use and Abuse of Language Evidence in the Courtroom". Blackwell.
• Susan Sarcevic. (1997). "New Approach to Legal Translation". Aspen Publishers.

Online Glossary of Legal Terms

If you simply want to look up the precise meaning of a legal term or phrase, we recommend the legal glossary at dictionary.law.com. The glossary is quite comprehensive, and you can search it by entering a legal term, or a definition. Alternatively, you can also click on a letter to consult a list of terms beginning with that letter.