Like many large law firms, you may have a multicultural team of solicitors at your disposal. It may be tempting to tap their talents as polyglots when you need to translate evidence, contracts, or court orders. But should you go with them or hire professional translators?
While a successful practice should have full confidence in their lawyers, overestimating their abilities as legal translators can lead to problems. Here are five reasons why you should outsource this task to an international legal translation services instead.
1. Reliability
Although it may be tempting to do translations in-house if your teammates can speak the language, this route may not provide the best work. While your co-workers may be fluent in both languages, they may only have legal experience under your firm’s operating language.
This oversight means they may have some blind spots when it comes to foreign terminology, regulatory requirements, or international legal systems.
When you hire a legal translator through an accredited service, you’ll partner with someone who has years of experience in your industry in both the source and target languages. You can rely on them to produce accurate work on a deadline.
2. Certification
You may want to partner with a professional legal translator, even if your bilingual co-worker has practical experience with the law in your target language. That’s because only a certified legal translator can provide the right accreditation required by some courts and governing bodies.
In many situations, these entities demand certified or notarised documents, and only a legal translation service can provide this official endorsement to satisfy legal and judicial requirements.
3. Flexibility
Things can change rapidly in the legal industry. Your firm may uncover new digital evidence or require a lexicon of technical words before you can file important paperwork.
Many legal translation companies provide flexible services that reflect your project’s needs and budget. When deadlines accelerate or goals change, they can pivot rapidly, increasing the number of translators working to ensure you don’t miss closing dates. Some even have access to sophisticated machine translation software that processes digital documents on a tight timeline.
4. Accessibility
Machine translation software can facilitate parts of your legal translation, but it should never replace a human translator entirely when it comes to the law. You miss out on the human touch when you hand over important client-facing contracts or patents to an automated service.
Legal translation services have real-life people working on your documents, and they’re available by phone or email to address any concerns or questions.
5. Security
A professional legal translation agency understands your industry's unique security and privacy demands, and you can trust it to follow all regulatory guidelines and ensure you meet compliance. But more broadly, partnering with a certified agency protects you from making tiny mistranslations that can get your law firm in big trouble.
Bottom Line On Legal Translation Professionals
While your bilingual staff may be able to speak fluently in other languages, they won’t stand toe-to-toe with a legal translator with years of professional experience. Only these certified experts can deliver the quality assistance you need.