Litigation Translation Services
Legal matters of many types are often document intensive. In our increasingly global society it’s not unusual for some documents to be in languages other than English.
Translating these documents into English for legal proceedings is frequently requested by attorneys and members of their legal teams. Document translation in support of litigation is a common type of project for translation companies like ours.
Sometimes projects begin with an email inquiry from a law office. Other times it’s a phone call with a request for initial information. If the law firm has not worked with non-English language documents before it’s new territory for them. Answers to a few basic questions are needed. Questions include how are services priced, what about certification (yes we provide certified translation services), and what’s the process for receiving a quote for services?
Sometimes projects begin with an email inquiry from a law office. Other times it’s a phone call with a request for initial information.
In the initial inquiry stage of a recent project we performed, a paralegal in a law office called to ask about services and mentioned a quote for translation services already received by opposing counsel. We listened. The costs sounded higher than ours so we invited the potential client to send the initial documents requiring translation for a comparative quote for services. It turned out we were able to do the project for a much lower fee without sacrificing translation quality.
Not all translators are well suited for this type of translation work. Translators have specializations just as professionals in other occupations do. Our responsibility as a translation company is to assign just the right resources for each project.
Another characteristic of projects with a variety of source documents to translate is their condition. Sometimes legibility is not ideal from scans and pieced together materials. Additionally translators must take care to preserve enough of the source document formatting so that a visual correlation between source and target text is clear.
