This is not only true for legal translations, but applies to texts about legal matters in general. Lawyers experience it on a daily basis, starting with the morning news. Was someone dismissed with immediate effect, e.g. because of a criminal act against the employer, or made redundant because the company had to scale down? To a layperson, the terms may sound interchangeable, but for a lawyer, choosing the right term makes all the difference.

Many people associate translation with ‘typing’. This leads them to believe that having a computer ‘type’ a pre-translation for them would save considerable time. But in fact, a large proportion of translation is research, mainly terminology research. And like with any other type of research, you need to know where to look and how to evaluate the results, i.e. how to distinguish an acceptable solution from a term that is precise and accurate and captures the subtle differences that laypersons may miss, but that are essential for lawyers to understand a text.

Since the end of the last century, generations of translators have learned that they should turn to search engines on the internet because this is where they can find any term used in any context or discipline. But legal knowledge is not always available online, at least not publicly, and information that is publicly available is not always as precise and accurate as a lawyer would expect (sometimes because it was simplified on purpose, sometimes due to a lack of understanding on the author’s side).

This is why expert translators do their research in terminology databases for experts (which do not always include lesser-spoken language variants like Austrian or Swiss German), and turn to the source if they need to understand every nuance of the term. Would you like to find out if a legal translator really knows their trade? Ask them when they last looked up something in statute – the result may be revealing.

The same applies to revisions of legal translations (never assume that knowing the target language is enough to ‘correct’ a translation) and to proofreading of legal texts.

Most widely spoken languages are not only used in one country. For legal texts and legal translations, this has immediate effects: In which country/jurisdiction was the original text written, and for which country/jurisdiction is the translation intended?

This usually affects the choice of words and phrases, spelling, and even grammar structures used. Again, these differences may not always be obvious to a layperson. But an Austrian lawyer will immediately spot whether a text was written by an Austrian or German lawyer simply by looking at the word ‘Schaden(s)ersatz’ (damages).

Things get even more complex when the same word means different things in different jurisdictions. In Austria, an old-age pension is referred to as ‘Pension’, while the word ‘Rente’ is used in the context of incapacity to work, e.g. following a work-related disease or accident, among other things. In Germany, however, ‘Rente’ is also the translation for old-age pension.

Translators often claim that they can easily familiarise themselves with any subject because… they are translators and this is part of their trade. But can they, really? As a translator and trained lawyer, I wouldn’t touch a medical text or a patent translation after one hour of internet research (to put it bluntly). As much as research for individual projects is an important part of a translator’s work, it cannot replace the subject-matter expertise acquired while studying to obtain a degree for several years.

Subject-matter expertise helps to recognise if the correct word was used in a given context. Take criminal law as an example – an area of law where subtle differences between meaning can change the life of the defendant forever. Was a crime committed ‘with intention’ or ‘with direct intention’? What may look like a synonym or an unimportant detail makes all the difference in court. You need to understand these differences from a subject-matter perspective to be able to render them correctly in the translation.

Whether you need a legal translation into German, a second expert opinion on an existing one, a translation revision, or proofreading of a German legal text: Get in touch to discuss your project