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Ten Years from Google Translate to ChatGPT: Why Machine and AI Legal Translation Carries Severe Consequences for Clients and Lawyers

By John O 'Shea on October 29, 2026 in legal language, Legal Translation, liability for translations, quality of legal translation, Μεταφράσεις νομικών κειμένων, Νομική μετάφραση

Ten Years from Google Translate to ChatGPT: Why Machine and AI Legal Translation Carries Severe Consequences for Clients and Lawyers

By John O’Shea (LL.B. (Hons), LL.M.)

1. A Decade of Technological Evolution, The Same Underlying Hazard

Across commercial law firms, corporate legal departments, and private litigation, a quiet assumption has taken hold that pasting foreign-language correspondence, witness statements, statutory provisions, or commercial agreements into a machine translation engine or generative AI chatbot carries no real consequence. Users frequently rationalise this practice by telling themselves that the output is merely for preliminary orientation, internal comprehension, or an informal check before instructing external counsel.

Empirical research into legal workflows confirms how deeply entrenched this attitude has become. In a survey of practising lawyers in Greece that I co-authored with Kyriaki Kourouni in Revista Tradumàtica (2025), practitioners reported turning to machine translation primarily to grasp the basic meaning of foreign texts (9.28%), manage cross-border client communications (8.25%), review internal documents (7.22%), and examine draft commercial contracts (6.19%). Strikingly, whilst 35.72% of the surveyed lawyers recognised that uploading legal material into free online translation tools breaches client confidentiality, 0% of respondents expressed any fear of being sued for professional malpractice or legal liability as a consequence of relying on machine output.

A decade of case law across common law and civil law jurisdictions demonstrates that this complacency is misplaced. Ten years ago, litigants who placed unverified Google Translate outputs before tribunals watched their evidence get rejected and their claims fail because statistical machine translation produced visibly broken syntax. Today, ten years down the line, the transition to neural machine translation (NMT) and large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT has failed to eliminate the underlying jurilinguistic hazard. By replacing obvious syntactic incoherence with polished, authoritative-sounding prose, modern artificial translation has made substantive errors far harder to detect, expanding the fallout to encompass both the client whose substantive rights are compromised and the legal practitioner whose professional conduct comes under judicial or disciplinary scrutiny.

2. Why Fluent AI Output Traps Both Clients and Counsel

To understand why modern AI translation creates acute legal exposure, one must look at how language models process legal text. In earlier generations of machine translation, defective output announced itself through garbled grammar that immediately warned a careful lawyer or company director to treat the text with caution. As Juliette Scott and I demonstrated in our Legal Translation Vulnerability Scoping framework (Research Handbook on Jurilinguistics, Edward Elgar, 2023), neural networks and generative AI replaced that visible awkwardness with an illusion of fluidity.

Machine learning systems optimise for probabilistic plausibility rather than comparative legal equivalence. When translating between legal orders that do not share the same conceptual architecture, such as the continental European civil law tradition of Greece and the common law systems of England and Wales or the United States, surface fluency masks severe doctrinal distortions. In our chapter Words Matter: How AI Pollutes the Language of the Law (International Handbook of Legal Language and Communication, Springer Nature, 2026), Argyri Panezi and I analysed how English-dominated training corpora introduce systematic jurisdiction bias and technology-mediated legal transplants into translated legal texts.

Empirical studies of Greek-to-English and English-to-Greek AI outputs illustrate how easily these systems flatten or displace statutory concepts:

Criminal and Regulatory Classification: In Greek criminal and regulatory compliance matters, automated systems routinely collapse the statutory tripartite division of offences under the Greek Penal Code (κακούργημα, πλημμέλημα, and πταίσμα) into generic English words such as “crime” or “offence”, or import Anglo-American common law concepts by rendering δόλος (dolus) as mere “intent” and αναστολή ποινής (suspension of sentence) as “probation”.
Civil and Corporate Acts: In civil and commercial contexts, neural translation systems have rendered a private-law legal transaction or juridical act (δικαιοπραξία) as “jurisdiction” (δικαιοδοσία), and reduced a formal criminal complaint subject to strict statutory time limits (έγκληση) to an informal “report”.
Appellate and Procedural Finality: As Daniel Webber and I documented when translating the Greek procedural codes (Translating Greece’s Procedural Codes, ELETO, 2023), even traditional legal dictionaries and automated tools routinely flatten the distinct procedural stages of Greek court decisions into the single English phrase “final judgment”. Under the Greek Code of Civil Procedure, however, an οριστική απόφαση disposes of the action before the first-instance court whilst remaining subject to ordinary appeal, a τελεσίδικη απόφαση denotes a judgment where ordinary appellate remedies have been exhausted or expired, an ανέκκλητη απόφαση refers to a decision that is by law not amenable to ordinary appeal, and an αμετάκλητη απόφαση signifies an irrevocable judgment no longer open to cassation before the Hellenic Supreme Court (Areios Pagos). A translation that renders all four categories simply as a “final judgment” misleads foreign counsel on the fundamental question of whether a judgment can still be challenged or enforced.

Furthermore, as Pierre Moor (2026) has observed in the context of legal interpretation, statutory and contractual provisions frequently contain deliberate normative ambiguity or open-textured concepts whose scope must be resolved by a court rather than a translator. When a generative AI model encounters an ambiguous source provision, it silently selects the most statistically probable English phrasing, committing the reader to a single substantive interpretation without alerting counsel that the original text admitted more than one reading.

Nor can this problem be solved simply by asking a reviewer to “post-edit” machine output. As Vilelmini Sosoni, Maria Stasimioti, and I demonstrated in our empirical comparison of from-scratch human translation and machine translation post-editing (Journal of Language and Law, 2022), the grammatical smoothness of neural output primes even trained reviewers to overlook major terminological and accuracy errors, creating a false sense of security whilst shifting full professional liability onto the human who signs off on the text.

3. Ten Years of Machine Translation in the Courts: From Early MT to Modern AI (2016–2026)

If technological progress had solved the risks of automated legal translation, judicial decisions criticizing defective machine translations would have faded into history after the mid-2010s. Instead, the case law from 2016 to 2026 shows a continuous line of evidentiary failures across tax tribunals, commercial courts, and statutory tribunals.

The 2016 Benchmark: Rejected Evidence and £243,564 in Tax Liability

Ten years ago, two decisions before the UK First-tier Tribunal (Tax Chamber) illustrated the immediate financial and procedural cost of relying on unverified translations in cross-border proceedings:

KIP UK Ltd v Revenue and Customs [2016] UKFTT 821 (TC): In a customs duty dispute, a party sought to rely on English translations generated through Google Translate. The Tribunal upheld the opposing party’s formal objection to the evidence, ruling that the machine translation “did not produce any meaningfully comprehensible summary” upon which a judicial body could rely.
Essential Telecom Ltd v Revenue and Customs [2016] UKFTT 475 (TC): In a cross-border value-added tax dispute involving £243,564, HM Revenue and Customs relied on unverified translations of Italian Guardia di Finanza investigation reports concerning an Italian counterparty. The UK Tribunal refused to admit the disputed evidence, characterising it as double hearsay and finding that the defective translations had caused “many wrong assumptions about the corporate or non-corporate form of the counterparty”.

Ten Years Later: NMT and ChatGPT in Commercial and Statutory Litigation

Move forward a decade to the era of neural machine translation and generative AI, and litigants are encountering the exact same judicial wall, now compounded by AI fabrication:

Euroboor BV v Grafova: In commercial litigation before a United States court, a party submitted a Google Translate version of a Dutch court judgment on which its legal argument relied. Despite a decade of neural network upgrades since 2016, the American court struggled to decipher the judicial reasoning in the machine-translated Dutch judgment, demonstrating that raw MT remains incapable of conveying complex foreign judicial reasoning to a common law bench.
Lozano González v Roberge: Before a Canadian tribunal, a litigant relied on a ChatGPT translation of foreign statutory provisions to support their legal case. Upon scrutiny, the tribunal found that ChatGPT had not merely translated the legislation inaccurately; the chatbot had effectively rewritten the statutory provisions on which the litigant’s argument depended.

This phenomenon of statutory distortion aligns directly with the empirical test reported in Panezi & O’Shea (2026), where ChatGPT, queried in English regarding a civil dispute under Greek law, fabricated confident English translations and doctrinal interpretations of Articles 1003 to 1010 of the Greek Civil Code. Across the globe, more than 2,000 judicial decisions have now documented the submission of AI-fabricated legal authorities and distorted statutory texts, a trend that has begun to trigger direct commercial litigation against AI vendors themselves, such as Nippon Life v OpenAI (filed in March 2026).

4. Consequences for the Client: Substantive Loss and ‘Terminology Drift’ in Commercial Disputes

For corporate and private clients, the danger of casual or uncoordinated translation extends well beyond a single rejected exhibit. Commercial relationships and cross-border investments evolve over many years. Agreements are negotiated and signed, board minutes and financial disclosures under Greek Law 4548/2018 are recorded, correspondence is exchanged when commercial friction arises, and extrajudicial notices are served when the relationship breaks down.

A recent decision of the Hellenic Supreme Court, Judgment No. 221/2026, provides a textbook demonstration of how translation choices made at different stages of a commercial venture can become a central forensic issue in high-value litigation.

The dispute arose out of a long-running wind-energy project in Greece between a Greek project developer and a Spanish corporate investor. Although the wind-energy project was situated in Greece, the commercial relationship between the parties was governed by contracts drafted in English. When the commercial relationship broke down, the Spanish investor served an extrajudicial notice declaring that it had decided to “terminate the … Contracts and withdraw from the Project”, proposing to transfer its shares in the project company for a nominal consideration pursuant to Article 5.2 of the Framework Agreement.

When the dispute reached the Greek courts, the legal characterisation and validity of that notice turned heavily on how the English contractual terms had been translated into Greek across the documentary record:

Inconsistent Rendering of the Core Contractual Mechanism (“Withdrawal”): In translating the Framework Agreement, the Greek developer rendered the heading “Withdrawal” as Υπαναχώρηση (the Greek civil law concept of statutory or contractual rescission/withdrawal). The Spanish investor’s translation of the heading used the more general word Απόσυρση, yet within the operative clauses of the Spanish investor’s own translation, the phrase “withdraw from their obligations” was rendered using υπαναχώρηση, while a third variant, αποχώρηση (departure/exit), also appeared in the arguments. The Court of Appeal expressly noted this terminological inconsistency across the translations before concluding, from the contractual mechanism of the share transfer, that “withdrawal” operated in Greek law as contractual υπαναχώρηση.
Disputed Translation of Commercial Thresholds (“Feasibility”): Under Article 3.5 of the Project Agreement, the investor’s right to withdraw was conditional upon the project’s “technical and financial feasibility” proving insufficient. One translation rendered “feasibility” as βιωσιμότητα (viability/sustainability), whereas the Court of Appeal held that σκοπιμότητα (expediency/feasibility in context) was the appropriate rendering within the architecture of the clause. Ultimately, the courts found that the investor’s notice failed to specify whether the alleged inadequacy was technical, financial, or both, and failed to identify the supporting data, resulting in the dismissal of the investor’s cassation appeal before the Supreme Court.

Hellenic Supreme Court Judgment No. 221/2026 illustrates what happens when translation is treated as an isolated lexical exercise rather than a file-level legal strategy. When a corporate client or legal team feeds a newly received extrajudicial notice, board resolution, or commercial letter into an AI tool or commissions an ad hoc translation without cross-referencing the terminology established years earlier in the underlying framework agreement, terminology drift enters the file. Because generative AI translates probabilistically, it will readily render an ordinary-looking English word like “withdrawal”, “feasibility”, “material”, or “default” using one Greek synonym in 2021 and a different Greek term in 2026. Once those documents are placed side by side before a court, the client has to pay counsel to litigate avoidable ambiguities created by their own translations.

5. Consequences for the Lawyer: Judicial Criticism, Disciplinary Exposure, and Malpractice

While clients bear the commercial and substantive fallout of defective translations, recent decisions from 2025 and 2026 demonstrate that practising lawyers face acute reputational, procedural, and disciplinary exposure when AI-translated material enters a legal file.

Judicial Rebuke for Overlooking AI Provenance: AA v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2026]

In AA v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2026] UKFTT PA747122024 (IAC), an appellant’s solicitors filed an English witness letter in support of an asylum appeal before the UK First-tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber). The English text read fluently and appeared to support the appellant’s factual account. However, at the end of the witness letter sat a conspicuous sentence offering to turn the letter into a formal affidavit, insert notarisation language, or make the wording more neutral.

First-tier Tribunal Judge CJ Williams immediately recognised the sentence for what it was: a conversational follow-up prompt generated by a chatbot. Upon questioning by the judge, the witness explained that he had written his account in Arabic, used ChatGPT to translate it into English, and then asked his daughter to compare the English output against the Arabic original to check that the meaning was the same.

At paragraph [28] of the judgment, Judge Williams delivered a pointed observation directed at the legal representatives who had placed the document into the court bundle:

“It is unfortunate that it fell to the Tribunal to notice this.”

For litigation solicitors and counsel, AA exposes two distinct professional vulnerabilities:

Failure of Basic Document Control: Detecting the leftover ChatGPT prompt at the foot of the witness statement required no knowledge of Arabic. It required only that the legal team read the English exhibit carefully from start to finish before filing it with the Tribunal.
The Fallacy of Casual ‘Human Involvement’: When lawyers defend the use of AI translation, they frequently point to the presence of a “human in the loop”. In AA, the witness’s daughter had reviewed the ChatGPT translation against the Arabic original. Yet as the case demonstrates, the mere fact that a bilingual relative, client employee, or junior staff member has looked over an AI translation tells a court nothing about their competence to identify subtle shifts in evidentiary certainty, omitted qualifications, or legal terminology. If a legal team misses an obvious English trace of ChatGPT on the face of a document, it has no credible basis for assuring a judge that the underlying foreign-language evidence has been reliably verified.

Professional Misconduct Findings Based on Unverified ChatGPT Translations: VA v JL [2025]

Even more concerning for legal practitioners is the New Zealand disciplinary decision in VA v JL [2025] NZLCRO 123, which arose from a client’s complaint regarding her lawyer’s handling of an employment and commercial dispute.

A central issue before the Legal Complaints Review Officer was whether the lawyer had misled her client by advising that commencing High Court proceedings could be used to halt or disrupt proceedings before the Employment Relations Authority. Crucially, the disputed advice was contained in chat messages exchanged between the lawyer and the client on 23 July 2021 in a foreign language (anonymised in the decision as “Language F”).

The client submitted a fuller record of the foreign-language chat exchange accompanied by English translations that the client stated she had generated using ChatGPT. In the ChatGPT-translated version, the lawyer was recorded as stating: “Yes, it will work” and “It does work! This is feasible!” The lawyer denied sending the disputed message and provided a shorter record with her own translations.

In making findings of unsatisfactory conduct against the lawyer, the Review Officer preferred the completeness of the client’s documentary record at paragraph [112] and expressly relied at paragraphs [208] and [209] on the statements “Yes, it will work” and “It does work! This is feasible!” when assessing the legal advice the lawyer had given. Yet nowhere in the published decision did the Review Officer explain how he established that the client’s ChatGPT translation accurately reflected the nuances of what had been written in Language F.

In legal advice concerning litigation strategy, the boundary between telling a client that a procedural route is theoretically possible and assuring the client that it will succeed turns on fine linguistic distinctions of modality and qualification. VA v JL serves as a stark warning to practising lawyers on two fronts. First, any foreign-language message you send to a client may subsequently be run through ChatGPT by that client and placed before a disciplinary tribunal as evidence of professional misconduct. Secondly, decision-makers who cannot read the source language may conflate the authenticity of a foreign-language record with the accuracy of its fluent English AI translation, treating unverified chatbot phrasing as proof of what a lawyer advised.

Confidentiality Breaches and the Vacuum of Vendor Liability

Beyond evidentiary and disciplinary perils in court, lawyers who upload client contracts, corporate disclosures, or pleadings into public machine translation or generative AI platforms face direct regulatory and contractual exposure. As Argyri Panezi and I examined in our paper for the International Conference on Machine Learning (Workshop on Generative AI and Law, ICML, 2023) and as the High Court of England and Wales emphasised in Ayinde v London Borough of Haringey [2025] EWHC 1383 regarding lawyers’ non-delegable supervisory duties over AI, practitioners remain bound by strict statutory duties of professional secrecy, UK and EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) obligations, and contractual Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs).

When an unverified AI translation causes financial loss or misses a statutory condition, the terms of service of every commercial AI and machine translation provider disclaim all warranties of accuracy and fitness for purpose. As I explored at the joint EULITA and PEEMPIP conference in Athens (Is Anyone Liable for Legal Translation?, 2024), technology vendors accept zero liability for the legal consequences of their outputs. The entire burden of professional negligence, regulatory sanction, and financial loss falls upon the instructing lawyer or corporate user who chose to rely on the machine.

6. Frequently Asked Questions

Has modern generative AI solved the legal translation errors seen in earlier tools like Google Translate?

No. While neural machine translation and generative AI models produce much smoother English sentences than statistical machine translation did ten years ago, empirical research shows that high fluency masks severe accuracy and terminological errors. Recent court decisions such as Lozano González v Roberge (where ChatGPT rewrote statutory provisions) and Euroboor BV v Grafova (where a US court struggled to understand a Google Translate rendering of a Dutch judgment) confirm that modern AI tools still fail to preserve legal meaning in contentious and transactional settings.

What are the risks to a lawyer who submits or relies on an AI-translated document in legal proceedings?

A lawyer who relies on or files an unverified AI translation risks judicial criticism for failing to check document provenance (as seen in AA v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2026] UKFTT PA747122024), file-level terminology drift across related contractual and litigation documents (as highlighted in Hellenic Supreme Court Judgment No. 221/2026), breaches of client confidentiality and GDPR obligations when uploading sensitive material to third-party servers, and full professional liability for any resulting loss. Furthermore, as VA v JL [2025] NZLCRO 123 illustrates, lawyers also face disciplinary risk when unverified ChatGPT translations of client communications are relied upon in professional conduct proceedings.

Is having a bilingual colleague or family member check a ChatGPT translation sufficient for legal purposes?

No. Reviewing an AI-generated translation against a foreign-language original requires specialist competence in both comparative law and legal translation. Empirical studies of machine translation post-editing (Sosoni, O’Shea & Stasimioti, 2022) demonstrate that the polished surface fluency of neural outputs anchors human reviewers, causing them to miss critical system-bound legal errors, omitted qualifications, and false equivalences between civil law and common law terminology.

7. Protecting Both Client and Counsel Through Specialist Lawyer-Linguist Expertise

The lesson of the past decade from KIP UK Ltd and Essential Telecom in 2016 to Hellenic Supreme Court Judgment No. 221/2026, AA v SSHD, and VA v JL in 2025 and 2026 is unmistakable: legal translation shapes the operative force of contracts, the admissibility of evidence, and the professional standing of legal advisers. Treating it as a zero-consequence mechanical task to be delegated to a probabilistic chatbot exposes both client and counsel to avoidable legal hazard.

Founded in 1997 in London and led by lawyer-linguist John O’Shea (LL.B. (Hons), LL.M.), JurTrans has spent nearly three decades providing specialist Greek-to-English and English-to-Greek legal and financial translation for international law firms, corporate legal departments, financial institutions, and private clients. Our practice is grounded in formal legal training, nearly thirty years of hands-on transactional and litigation experience across Greece, Cyprus, and the United Kingdom, and authoritative legal scholarship, including co-translating Greece’s foundational statutory codes (The Greek Penal Code, The Greek Code of Civil Procedure, The Greek Code of Criminal Procedure, and the Greek Code of Private Maritime Law) within the Lex Graeca series.

When you instruct JurTrans on a commercial contract, corporate finance transaction, regulatory filing, or cross-border litigation bundle, we protect both client and instructing counsel by ensuring:

From-Scratch Specialist Translation: Every document is translated from scratch by a qualified specialist without reliance on public machine translation or generative AI, eliminating the risk of algorithmic hallucinations and common law terminology bias.
File-Level Terminological Consistency: In multi-year commercial relationships and contentious proceedings, we cross-check new notices, pleadings, and exhibits against the terminology already established in your underlying agreements and court file.
Source-Text Detective Work: During 2024, across 946 Greek legal documents translated into English at JurTrans, we identified source-text errors, ambiguous statutory citations, or internal inconsistencies in approximately 95% of the originals. Rather than silently guessing or flattening an ambiguity, we preserve the integrity of the text and flag source-text defects directly for instructing counsel.
Strict Confidentiality and Accountability: All documents are handled under strict professional confidentiality and formal Non-Disclosure Agreements, backed by professional accountability that no AI vendor provides.

To discuss a Greek or Cypriot legal or financial translation requirement in complete confidence, contact John O’Shea at JurTrans via jurtrans.com or email info@jurtrans.com.

#legaltranslation #genAI #legalrisk #litigation

The Review Officer relied on a ChatGPT translation. But who checked it?

By John O 'Shea on October 26, 2026 in Legal Translation, Νομική μετάφραση

The words “It does work! This is feasible!” appeared in a New Zealand legal disciplinary decision concerning a lawyer accused of misleading her client about litigation strategy. The Legal Complaints Review Officer referred to them when examining the advice the lawyer had given. He ultimately found that the client had been misled and made findings of unsatisfactory conduct against the lawyer.

There is something particularly interesting about those words, though. They were not originally written in English. They appeared in a translation of chat messages that the client said had been produced using ChatGPT. The Review Officer knew this. He expressly recorded it in his decision. But how did he establish that the English accurately reflected what the lawyer had written in the original language?

That is the question I find most interesting about VA v JL [2025] NZLCRO 123.

A dispute about what the lawyer said

The case arose from a complaint about the handling of an employment and commercial dispute. The client maintained that her lawyer had advised her that High Court proceedings could be used to stop or disrupt proceedings before the Employment Relations Authority. An important part of the evidence consisted of chat messages exchanged between the client and the lawyer on 23 July 2021. Both parties produced records of the exchange, but the records differed. The client’s version contained messages in a language anonymised in the decision as Language F, accompanied by English translations she said ChatGPT had produced. The lawyer supplied a shorter version, with what the Review Officer believed were her own translations. Crucially, the client’s version included substantive advice that did not appear in the lawyer’s record. The lawyer denied sending the relevant message.

Which record was more complete?

At paragraph [112], the Review Officer explained why he preferred the client’s record. He considered her records otherwise meticulous, thought deletion of messages more likely than fabrication, and noted that some messages in the lawyer’s version appeared to be replies to missing communications. On the balance of probabilities, he found the client’s record more complete. But that finding did not establish that its English translation was accurate.

Two different evidential questions

For me, this is the central problem with the way the translated evidence was handled. The Review Officer had two questions to consider. The first was which party had supplied the more complete account of the correspondence. The second was what the original-language messages actually meant. Those are not the same question. It is entirely possible for a chat record to be authentic and complete, yet for its English translation to be inaccurate. A translation might omit a qualification, introduce a degree of certainty absent from the original, or convey the general sense while altering an important distinction.

In this case, the Review Officer offered reasons for preferring one record over the other. But the published decision does not explain how he established that the ChatGPT-generated English accurately represented the underlying messages. There is no identified independent translation, no discussion of linguistic verification and no indication that the Review Officer was himself able to understand Language F. Perhaps the translation had been checked. Perhaps there was some other basis for treating it as reliable. The decision does not tell us.

There is also a more subtle difficulty with the reasoning in paragraph [112]. One reason the Review Officer gave for preferring the client’s record was that some of the messages were not what the client would have wanted to hear. But how could he assess what the messages would have meant to the client without first establishing what they actually said? That assessment appears to depend, at least in part, on the meaning conveyed by the English translation. In other words, the translated content was being used to help assess the reliability of the record, without an explanation of how the translation itself had been verified.

I find that an uncomfortable evidential gap.

Why the precise wording mattered

This was not simply a case where an AI translation was included among the documents and then largely ignored. At paragraph [208], the Review Officer expressly returned to the July correspondence. He attributed to the lawyer the statements “Yes, it will work” and “It does work! This is feasible!” He considered those statements when assessing whether the lawyer had allowed her client to believe that commencing High Court proceedings would achieve a particular procedural result. At paragraph [209], he included the July exchange among the evidence concerning the advice the client had received.

The precise meaning of those words matters.

There is a difference between telling a client that a particular course of action is legally possible and assuring the client that it will achieve the desired outcome. There may also be important distinctions between expressing confidence, identifying a possibility and giving a qualified opinion about litigation strategy. Those distinctions can be conveyed differently in different languages. They can also be altered in translation. I am not suggesting that ChatGPT necessarily mistranslated the lawyer’s message. We have no basis for concluding that it did. But equally, the English wording cannot establish its own accuracy. The Review Officer did acknowledge that the disputed message included a warning about the costs and stress of pursuing proceedings. He did not treat it as an unqualified recommendation to litigate. Nevertheless, he relied on its translated content when assessing the advice given.

If the meaning of a disputed communication contributes to a finding about a lawyer’s professional conduct, surely the reliability of the translation deserves some attention.

The Review Officer recognised translation difficulties elsewhere

There is another aspect of the decision I find revealing. At paragraph [106], the Review Officer expressly acknowledged that he did not have English translations of certain earlier messages from the client. He therefore discussed the lawyer’s replies, which were in English. At paragraph [114], dealing with a separate instruction, he described an expression as an inexact translation and interpreted the client’s instructions in their wider context. So translation difficulties were not entirely absent from his reasoning. Yet when it came to the disputed ChatGPT-translated exchange, there is no corresponding explanation of how the accuracy of the English wording was established. The distinction is important. Recognising that a translation exists, or recognising that another translation may be inexact, is not the same as verifying the meaning of the original-language evidence.

Does this call the disciplinary outcome into question? There is an important qualification to this criticism. The Review Officer did not rely exclusively on the ChatGPT-translated messages. His findings were based on a substantial body of evidence, including written legal advice, the conduct of the proceedings and a later translated conversation supplied by the lawyer herself. It would therefore be wrong to suggest that the entire disciplinary outcome depended on the accuracy of one ChatGPT translation. We cannot know whether an independently verified translation would have affected any of the findings. Nor does the decision establish that the ChatGPT translation was inaccurate.

My concern is narrower, but I think it is important. The Review Officer expressly relied on statements appearing in a translation when deciding what advice a lawyer had given. Yet his published reasons do not explain how the accuracy of that translation was established. That is a problem with the transparency of the evidential reasoning, irrespective of whether the ultimate findings were justified by other evidence.

Who checks the evidence when the decision-maker cannot read the original?

In my recent discussion of AA v Secretary of State for the Home Department, I examined a case in which a judge noticed an obvious indication of ChatGPT use in a witness letter that the solicitors had apparently overlooked. That case raised questions about lawyers’ responsibility for checking AI-assisted evidence before submitting it to a court. VA v JL raises a different question. Here, the decision-maker was expressly aware that ChatGPT had been used to translate the evidence. The problem was not detecting AI involvement. It was establishing the reliability of the translated material before relying on its meaning.

Of course, courts and other legal decision-makers routinely deal with evidence written in languages they do not understand. They must be able to rely on translations. I am not suggesting that every translated document requires an independent expert assessment, or that the mere involvement of ChatGPT automatically renders a translation unreliable. But where the content of a communication is disputed, the parties offer different records, and the meaning attributed to particular words contributes to findings of professional misconduct, the method by which that meaning is established deserves scrutiny.

The mere fact that a translation reads fluently in English does not establish that it accurately communicates the source. Nor does preferring one party’s documentary record establish the accuracy of that party’s translation. In AA, the question was why the lawyers failed to notice what the judge noticed. In VA v JL, the question is what the Review Officer did with the knowledge that he was relying on an AI-generated translation.

If a decision-maker relies on translated words to determine what a lawyer said, shouldn’t the decision explain how the meaning of those words was verified? That seems to me a reasonable question to ask when translated evidence becomes part of the basis for a finding of professional misconduct.

#LegalTranslation #AIandLaw #Evidence #LegalTech #ProfessionalResponsibility

#AI #legaltranslation

The judge spotted ChatGPT. Why didn’t the lawyers?

By John O 'Shea on October 20, 2026 in Legal Translation, translation of legal documents, Νομική μετάφραση

The judge spotted ChatGPT. Why didn’t the lawyers?

Imagine receiving a witness letter in support of your client’s case. It appears to confirm facts on which you intend to rely. The English reads reasonably well. The document is added to the evidence bundle and filed with the court. There is just one problem. The last sentence offers to turn the letter into a formal affidavit, add notarisation language or make the wording more neutral. That is not what you would normally expect to find at the end of a witness’s account of events. It reads remarkably like an invitation from a chatbot to continue the conversation. Would you have noticed it?

In AA v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2026] UKFTT PA747122024 (IAC), the judge did. The solicitors who filed the letter apparently had not.

The case raises questions about the use of AI translation in legal proceedings. But for me, its most interesting aspect is not a demonstrated failure of machine translation. It is the responsibility of lawyers for checking the provenance, preparation and reliability of the documents they place before a court. And there is an interesting tension in the judgment between the judge’s criticism of the solicitors and the way the Tribunal dealt with the use of AI translation itself.

A witness letter with an unexpected ending

The case concerned an Egyptian national appealing against the refusal of his asylum claim. He maintained that he faced persecution because of his political activities and claimed association with the Muslim Brotherhood. Among the evidence was a letter from a witness identified as YR, who said he had known the appellant in Egypt and had participated in political activities with him. At the hearing, First-tier Tribunal Judge CJ Williams asked how the witness’s letter had been prepared. The witness initially explained that he had written it with someone’s assistance and that his daughter had translated it into English. But the judge had noticed something peculiar at the end of the letter: a sentence offering to adapt the document into a formal affidavit, insert notarisation language or use more neutral wording. That prompted the judge to ask whether ChatGPT or another AI system had been used. YR explained that he had written the letter in Arabic, used ChatGPT to translate it into English and then asked his daughter to compare the English version with the Arabic original to check that the meaning was the same.

There is a small but interesting distinction between those accounts. In the initial explanation, the daughter had translated the letter. In the subsequent explanation, ChatGPT had translated it and the daughter had checked it. One account might simply be shorthand for the other. The judgment does not suggest that the distinction was itself decisive. Nevertheless, for lawyers assessing the provenance of evidence, the difference between translating a document and checking someone else’s translation is not insignificant.

The judge’s criticism

Paragraph 28 contains the observation that, in my view, lawyers should concentrate on: “It is unfortunate that it fell to the Tribunal to notice this”. The judge was referring to the discovery of the apparent AI-generated text in the letter, something the appellant’s solicitors had apparently failed to identify before submitting it. The judge also criticised the absence of a statement of truth from a witness who was intended to give oral evidence. These are separate issues. One concerns the preparation and checking of a document. The other concerns the form in which witness evidence was presented. Neither requires a finding that the underlying Arabic was mistranslated. That is precisely why the episode is worth examining. Lawyers routinely receive documents prepared by clients, witnesses, foreign counsel, administrative staff and other third parties. They cannot

personally create or verify every piece of information those documents contain. But when does reasonable reliance on material prepared by others become an inadequate check on evidence submitted in their professional capacity? And how far should lawyers be expected to investigate the use of AI in producing that material?

Two very different kinds of checking

For me, AA exposes a distinction that is frequently overlooked when lawyers discuss AI translation. The first kind of checking concerns the document itself. Does it contain extraneous material? Is it complete? Does it appear to be the witness’s evidence rather than a draft, template or chatbot response? Has the final version been read before filing? Does it satisfy the relevant procedural requirements? In this case, the telltale sentence was in English. Detecting it required no knowledge of Arabic and no particular expertise in translation. That is what makes the judge’s criticism difficult to dismiss. The second kind of checking is much harder. Does the English version accurately and completely communicate what the witness wrote in Arabic? Has anything been omitted, added, softened or made more emphatic? Have factual assertions retained their meaning? Has the translation introduced language that changes the character or certainty of the evidence? Answering those questions requires more than reading the English fluently. It requires an assessment against the original by someone competent to perform that task. A lawyer who does not read Arabic may be able to identify a chatbot’s leftover instruction. The same lawyer may be entirely unable to identify a subtle mistranslation that materially changes the witness’s account.

The fact that one check has been performed tells us very little about whether the other has. The problem with ‘human involvement’

There is another aspect of this case I find revealing. The witness said his daughter had compared the Arabic and English versions to ensure that the meaning was the same. That may have been a useful check. There is no finding that she was unable to perform it or that the translation was inaccurate. But should the mere fact that a human has reviewed an AI-generated translation be sufficient to reassure a lawyer relying on it? I would suggest not, without knowing more about the nature of the review. Who carried it out? What linguistic competence did that person possess? Did they compare the complete texts? Were they checking for accuracy, omissions and alterations of meaning, or simply whether the English appeared to reflect the general sense of the Arabic?

Those are quite different exercises.

In a legal setting, the distinction matters because the translation is not merely facilitating informal communication. It is being used as evidence. The judgment does not determine whether the daughter’s review was adequate. Nor does it establish what further verification, if any, the solicitors undertook. It does, however, provide a useful example of why the presence of a human somewhere in an AI-assisted process should not automatically be equated with meaningful quality assurance.

Judicial tolerance is not judicial approval

There is an important qualification to all this.

Paragraph 29 records that the Home Office presenting officer did not argue that the use of AI for translation, with some human involvement, warranted reducing the weight given to YR’s evidence on that particular ground. The judge ultimately found that the evidence of the two supporting witnesses did not particularly strengthen the appellant’s claim. The appeal was dismissed following an assessment of credibility and the evidence as a whole. But the Tribunal did not find that ChatGPT

had produced an inaccurate translation. Nor did it establish a general rule that ChatGPT translations checked by a family member are acceptable evidence. That distinction is important. It would be easy to present AA as another case where AI translation went wrong and a litigant suffered the consequences. The judgment does not support that conclusion. Equally, it would be misleading to interpret the absence of a translation-related penalty as judicial endorsement of AI-assisted translation. What the decision demonstrates is narrower, but arguably more interesting: a court can be critical of the way AI-assisted evidence was prepared and submitted without treating AI involvement as an automatic reason for discounting that evidence.

A different warning from the cases already emerging

In my earlier discussion of Lozano Gonzάlez v Roberge, a Canadian tribunal confronted a ChatGPT translation of legislation that had effectively rewritten the statutory provisions on which a litigant relied. In Euroboor BV v Grafova, an American court struggled to understand the reasoning in a Dutch judgment supplied in a Google Translate version. Those cases raised questions about what happens when translated legal material fails to communicate the meaning on which a legal argument depends.

AA raises a related but different problem. Here, the visible failing was not a demonstrated mistranslation. It was the failure to identify an obvious indication of chatbot involvement before the document reached the Tribunal. That brings the issue much closer to the everyday work of lawyers managing evidence. It is one thing to ask whether AI can translate accurately enough for use in proceedings. It is another to ask what a legal team must do before relying on a document that someone else has translated using AI. The first question concerns technological performance and linguistic reliability. The second concerns professional judgment, document control and accountability. The answers are connected, but they are not the same.

Who takes responsibility?

Nothing in AA establishes professional misconduct by the solicitors, or a particular sanction for submitting an AI-translated document. Nor should a decision of a UK First-tier Tribunal be treated as laying down a universal standard for lawyers in other jurisdictions. But the wider questions transcend the procedural rules of any single court. Suppose a witness sends a lawyer an English statement translated from another language using ChatGPT. The lawyer cannot read the original language. The witness assures the lawyer that a relative has checked the translation. The English looks plausible. The document is then filed. What exactly is the lawyer relying on? The witness’s assurance? The relative’s linguistic ability? The apparent fluency of the English? The reputation of the AI system? And what evidence is there of the verification process if the translation is subsequently challenged?

I do not think the answer is that every lawyer must personally translate every foreign-language document or that AI can never form part of a translation workflow. The question is whether the lawyer has sufficient grounds for treating the version filed as a reliable representation of the underlying evidence. That is a question about the process as well as the product.

A warning worth taking seriously

The AI-generated sentence in AA was conspicuous enough for the judge to notice. Its presence was embarrassing, but it also served a useful purpose: it made the use of ChatGPT visible and prompted questions about the document’s preparation. Many machine-translated documents contain no such obvious clue. They look like perfectly ordinary English documents. Some may be entirely accurate. Others may not be. The difficulty is that the absence of a conspicuous error tells us nothing reliable

about the accuracy of the underlying translation. For lawyers, that is the uncomfortable point. The judge’s observation in AA should not be read as a finding that AI translation is inherently unreliable It should be read as a reminder that someone must take responsibility for what reaches the court.

If the legal team misses an obvious trace of ChatGPT that can be detected simply by reading the English, what basis does it have for confidence in the parts of the document that can only be checked against the original language?

That is a question worth asking before the next witness letter is filed.

#Litigation #ProfessionalResponsibility #LegalTranslation #LegalTech #AIandLaw #Evidence #LegalRisk #LawyersOfLinkedin

#AI #legal translation #Riskmitigation AI and legal translation

Greek court judgments: translation challenges for international clients and lawyers

By John O 'Shea on October 13, 2026 in Legal Translation, Μεταφράσεις νομικών κειμένων, Νομική μετάφραση

When a Greek court delivers a judgment, the parties involved naturally want to know what the court has decided and what happens next. For international clients who do not speak Greek, obtaining a clear and accurate English translation is often essential to understanding the outcome of the proceedings and discussing the implications with their Greek lawyers. The same applies to lawyers practising outside Greece who advise clients involved in Greek litigation. They may need to examine the judgment to understand the court’s reasoning, identify the issues decided and discuss the available options with the Greek legal team.

However, translating a Greek court judgment presents some distinctive challenges. Greek judicial decisions frequently contain lengthy and complex legal reasoning expressed in highly formal language. Procedural concepts may have no straightforward English equivalents, while apparently familiar terms can conceal important differences between legal systems. These problems become particularly significant when the judgment may be challenged on appeal or when the parties need to understand its consequences.

And with artificial intelligence now making it possible to generate an English translation or summary of a lengthy judgment in seconds, there is a further question: how much confidence can international clients and their lawyers place in the resulting text?

Understanding the structure of a Greek court judgment

Greek court judgments follow established drafting conventions which reflect the structure of Greek judicial reasoning and the procedural rules governing the proceedings. Depending on the court and type of proceedings, the judgment will ordinarily identify the court and parties, record relevant procedural information and set out the court’s reasoning before stating its decision. Two sections are especially important when translating a Greek judgment. The first is the σκεπτικό, the court’s reasoning, often introduced by the formula ΣΚΕΦΘΗΚΕ ΣΥΜΦΩΝΑ ΜΕ ΤΟ ΝΟΜΟ (having considered the matter in accordance with the law). This part of the judgment explains the legal basis on which the court has reached its conclusions. It may contain lengthy discussions of statutory provisions, references to case law and an examination of the parties’ arguments. The second is the διατακτικό, the operative part, commonly introduced by the expression ΓΙΑ ΤΟΥΣ ΛΟΓΟΥΣ ΑΥΤΟΥΣ (for these reasons). The operative part records the court’s decisions on the matters before it, including the disposition of claims and any orders made.

For a foreign reader, the relationship between these sections is fundamental to understanding what the judgment actually says.

The linguistic complexity of Greek judicial decisions

The language of Greek judgments presents difficulties that extend beyond specialised legal terminology. Greek judicial writing frequently employs long sentences containing multiple subordinate clauses. The syntax can be intricate, with qualifications and exceptions embedded within the same sentence as the principal legal proposition. In addition, some judicial formulations retain features of the older formal language associated with καθαρεύουσα, particularly in established expressions and conventional legal phraseology.

For translators working from Greek into English, these characteristics demand close attention to the grammatical and logical relationships within the text. The translator must establish precisely which proposition is being qualified, what a particular pronoun or participle refers to and whether a statement reflects the court’s conclusion or the position of one of the parties. These distinctions can become difficult to follow when a sentence extends over much of a paragraph. English legal writing generally permits a different approach to sentence construction. A lengthy Greek sentence may therefore need to be divided or restructured in English to make the reasoning intelligible. However, restructuring must preserve the original logical relationships. Careless division of a sentence can detach a qualification from the proposition to which it relates or alter the relationship between the court’s findings and its conclusions. This is where the ability to think and write like a lawyer becomes particularly valuable. Understanding the legal argument allows the translator to reconstruct it in clear English while preserving its precise meaning. The objective is an English text that a lawyer can read naturally and follow without losing any of the legal substance contained in the Greek original.

When is a Greek court judgment final?

One of the most revealing examples of the difficulties involved in translating Greek judgments concerns the terminology used to describe their procedural status. Consider the expression τελεσίδικη απόφαση. A reader encountering the English expression “final judgment” might reasonably assume that the judgment can no longer be challenged. Greek procedural law, however, recognises distinctions that make this apparently straightforward translation potentially misleading. In our paper Translating Greece’s Procedural Codes, presented at the 2023 conference of the Hellenic Society for Terminology, Daniel Webber and I examined the treatment of procedural terminology in existing Greek-English legal dictionaries. We found that all four dictionaries examined rendered τελεσίδικη απόφαση using variants of “final judgment” or “final decision”, without adequately reflecting the procedural distinctions recognised by Greek law. An οριστική απόφαση may be final in the sense that it disposes of the matter before the court, while remaining open to ordinary legal remedies. A τελεσίδικη απόφαση has reached a different procedural position, generally because the relevant ordinary legal remedies have been exhausted or the periods for exercising them have expired. Greek procedural law also recognises the category of ανέκκλητη απόφαση, concerning judgments which by their nature are not amenable to the relevant remedies, as well as αμετάκλητη απόφαση, which involves the exhaustion of available legal remedies, including the relevant avenues of recourse to higher courts.

For international clients, these distinctions can be important to understanding the procedural history of their case. They also illustrate the difficulties faced by foreign lawyers who may be familiar with the English word “final” but unfamiliar with the different categories recognised under Greek law. The translation needs to communicate the source terminology accurately without creating a misleading impression about the status of the decision. Determining whether a particular judgment can still be challenged, or what consequences follow from its procedural status, is a matter for the lawyers responsible for the proceedings.

Errors in the original Greek judgment: an overlooked translation problem

There is another difficulty which frequently arises in legal translation and which is easily overlooked by the end user: the original Greek document may itself contain errors. At JurTrans, our experience of translating Greek legal documents has made us particularly conscious of this problem. In an article published in January 2025, I reported that during 2024 we translated 946 Greek legal documents into English and found that approximately 95% contained at least one error of some kind. These figures relate to JurTrans’s own workload, which included various categories of legal documents. They should not be interpreted as a representative statistical study of the quality of Greek court judgments. Nevertheless, they illustrate how frequently source-text problems arise in our translation work. Some errors are relatively straightforward, while others require considerably more research to identify and understand. A judgment may refer to an incorrect article of legislation or contain an ambiguous statutory citation. There may also be inconsistencies in how a particular legal term is used. The translator must determine whether the apparent inconsistency has a reasonable explanation or whether there is a genuine problem in the Greek text.

In The legal translator as detective, I described an example from our translation work involving a reference to an article of the Greek Code of Civil Procedure. The provision cited in the document appeared to have no connection with the procedural steps being described. After checking the surrounding provisions and searching the Code, I eventually discovered that the reference related to an earlier version of the legislation. The source document had failed to make that historical context clear. Having identified the issue, I suggested that the instructing lawyer clarify the Greek wording. He agreed. The incident is a good illustration of the research that may be necessary to understand a legal text correctly. Given the successive amendments made to Greek legislation, consulting the current version of a statutory provision may sometimes be insufficient to establish the meaning of a historical reference.

Where a judgment contains an apparent error, the translator must preserve the integrity of the source text while drawing the issue to the attention of the instructing lawyer where appropriate. A careful translation process can therefore reveal problems which might otherwise remain unnoticed, particularly by clients who cannot consult the Greek original.

Why relying on AI-generated summaries of Greek judgments is risky

The ability to obtain an instant summary of a lengthy court judgment is understandably attractive. International clients may want an immediate answer to whether the proceedings have been successful, while foreign lawyers may need to understand the broad significance of a decision before speaking to their Greek counterparts. Generative AI systems appear to offer a convenient solution. A document can be uploaded and a short English summary requested in a matter of seconds. The difficulty lies in the reliability of that summary. Court judgments often depend on distinctions which can be lost when a lengthy text is compressed into a short narrative. A statutory exception may substantially qualify a legal proposition. The court may accept part of a party’s argument while rejecting another part. An apparently straightforward conclusion may depend on a particular interpretation of the facts or the application of a specific procedural rule. If a summary overlooks one of these qualifications, the reader may be left with an inaccurate understanding of the decision. There is also the risk that an automated system will fail to distinguish correctly between the parties’ submissions and the findings of the court. Greek judgments may reproduce the arguments advanced by litigants before explaining whether those arguments have been accepted. An AI-generated summary which attributes a rejected submission to the court would fundamentally misrepresent that part of the judgment.

These concerns are consistent with findings in the growing academic literature on automatic legal-document summarisation. In a 2024 study of large language models and generative systems for summarising court judgments, Aniket Deroy, Kripabandhu Ghosh and Saptarshi Ghosh examined systems using judgments from the supreme courts of the United Kingdom and India. Although generative systems performed relatively well according to conventional automatic evaluation metrics, closer examination identified inconsistencies in their summaries. The researchers concluded that further improvements were needed before such systems could be considered sufficiently reliable without detailed human checking. More recently, a 2026 review of legal-document summarisation research highlighted the difficulty of preserving the argumentative structure of judgments and the limitations of evaluation methods which primarily measure similarities in wording rather than legal accuracy.

Neither study, though, specifically evaluates Greek court judgments, but both identify problems relevant to the task of summarising complex judicial reasoning. The challenge is compounded when a Greek judgment is summarised directly into English. The system is then required to interpret the Greek legal text and produce a compressed account in another language, potentially concealing errors from readers who cannot independently verify the original.

For lawyers considering the implications of a judgment, a summary cannot provide the level of detail available in an accurate translation of the full text. The actual wording of the court’s reasoning may be central to understanding the decision and discussing possible further steps with Greek counsel.

What does research tell us about AI translation from Greek into English?

The limitations of automated translation in the Greek-English legal context have also been the subject of empirical research. In September 2026, Vilelmini Sosoni and I published a chapter in Springer’s International Handbook of Legal Language and Communication entitled Translating Normative Legal Texts: A Comparative Evaluation of Neural Machine Translation and Generative Artificial Intelligence Models in the Greek-English Language Pair. The study compared a neural machine translation system trained on legal-domain material with three generative AI models. We evaluated translations of two Greek property law texts, comprising planning legislation and a property sale agreement, using automatic translation-quality metrics alongside detailed human error analysis. Our findings were revealing. Accuracy errors predominated across the systems examined, and most were classified as major in severity. Although the generated English generally displayed adequate fluency, the generative AI models did not systematically outperform the specialist neural machine translation system.

These findings concern normative legal texts rather than court judgments. Their significance for the present discussion lies in the difficulties the systems encountered when translating specialised Greek legal concepts into English. The results reinforce the need to distinguish between an English text that reads fluently and one that faithfully communicates the legal meaning of its Greek source. A system may produce entirely natural English while selecting an inappropriate equivalent for a Greek procedural concept or failing to preserve an important qualification. Recognising such problems requires detailed knowledge of the source legal system and the ability to evaluate the translation against the original. Technology certainly has useful applications in legal translation, particularly in supporting research and maintaining terminological resources. However, the limitations identified in empirical studies call for considerable caution when using AI or machine translation to communicate the substance of court judgments.

At JurTrans, our approach to documents of this nature is based on establishing the meaning of the Greek text through specialist legal-linguistic analysis and producing an English translation whose accuracy can be carefully verified against the source.

Preparing Greek judgments and appeal documents for international readers

The usefulness of a Greek-English legal translation also depends on understanding the circumstances in which it will be read. For a Greek lawyer representing an international client, the primary objective may be to enable that client to understand the court’s decision and participate meaningfully in discussions about the case. Lawyers practising outside Greece may require more detailed access to the reasoning, particularly where the litigation has implications for their client’s commercial activities or wider legal affairs. In either situation, the translator benefits from understanding the purpose of the assignment. Where a judgment refers extensively to previous decisions or procedural documents, access to those materials may assist with the interpretation of terminology and the maintenance of consistency across the translations. The English text should also enable the reader to locate the corresponding material in the Greek original. This requires attention to the document’s structure, the identification of the parties and the reproduction of references to legislation and earlier decisions. Where only selected passages are translated, the extent of the translation should be clearly identified so that the reader is aware of the material covered. However, where the purpose is to understand the judgment as a whole, a complete translation is generally more useful than an abbreviated account which may omit context essential to the court’s reasoning. The appropriate scope should be agreed with the instructing lawyer, who remains responsible for determining how the translated document will be used in connection with the proceedings.

The value of specialist Greek-English legal translation expertise

At JurTrans, we have specialised in Greek-English legal and financial translation for three decades. Our work involves examining legal documents within their procedural and substantive context, with particular attention to terminology whose meaning depends on the structure of the Greek legal system. That experience is supported by formal legal education, university-level teaching experience and sustained involvement in academic research into legal translation.

Through our work on the Lex Graeca project, including the translation of major Greek codes (both substantive and procedural) into English, we have also developed extensive experience in researching Greek legal terminology and establishing consistent English renderings of concepts which are often inadequately covered by existing reference works.

We have translated many millions of words over those decades and have countless satisfied clients. These figures reflect the depth of experience accumulated across a broad range of legal assignments.

Our approach to translating Greek court judgments is informed by detailed familiarity with the intricacies of Greek law and an appreciation of how the English translation will be understood by lawyers accustomed to different legal systems.

We approach each text with the analytical mindset of a lawyer, examining the reasoning and procedural context before settling on the most appropriate English terminology. Equally important is close attention to detail. Statutory references are checked where necessary, potential inconsistencies are investigated and questions arising from the Greek original are raised with the instructing lawyer when clarification is required. This is supported by specialist legal reference resources, access to current legal databases and a commitment to the confidentiality of clients’ documents.

For international clients and their legal advisers, the objective is to provide an English translation which communicates the substance of the Greek judgment faithfully and allows the legal issues to be discussed on an informed basis.

Frequently asked questions about translating Greek court judgments

Does a Greek court judgment need to be translated in full?

The appropriate scope depends on why the translation is required. Where an international client or foreign lawyer needs to understand the complete reasoning and outcome of the proceedings, a full translation is generally the most useful option. Translations of selected passages may also be appropriate, provided their scope is clearly identified and agreed with the instructing lawyer.

Can AI summarise a Greek judgment accurately?

AI-generated summaries may provide preliminary orientation, but their reliability should not be assumed. Research into automated judgment summarisation has identified factual inconsistencies, while studies of Greek-English legal translation have found substantial accuracy errors in automated outputs. Where a judgment’s meaning is important, the original text and an accurate professional translation provide a more dependable basis for legal discussion.

What should be provided when commissioning a Greek court judgment translation?

Providing the complete Greek document and, where relevant, earlier decisions or existing translations can help the translator understand the procedural context and maintain consistent terminology. It is also useful to explain who will read the translation and whether particular cross-references or presentation requirements need to be preserved.

Greek court judgment and appeal translation services at JurTrans

Greek court judgments and appeals can be demanding documents to translate. Their legal meaning depends on the procedural context, the structure of judicial reasoning and the specialised terminology of Greek law.

For international clients and the lawyers advising them, an accurate English translation provides the basis for understanding what the Greek court has decided and discussing its significance with the Greek legal team.

JurTrans provides specialist Greek-English translation of court judgments, appeal documents and related litigation materials, drawing on decades of practical experience and academic research into legal language.

If you require an English translation of a Greek court judgment or documents relating to an appeal, please contact JurTrans or email info@jurtrans.com.

JurTrans is a specialist legal translation company and does not provide legal advice. This article addresses legal translation and communication issues for general information. Questions concerning legal rights, procedural remedies and the consequences of court decisions should be addressed to the lawyers responsible for the proceedings.

#AI #greeklaw #greeklawyers #legal translation #νομικημετάφραση Greek legal translation

Legal translation quotations #2

By John O 'Shea on October 12, 2026 in Legal terminology, Legal Translation, Legal Translation Quotes, translation of legal documents, Μεταφράσεις νομικών κειμένων

“This paper has shown that GenAI is not fully capable of identifying terms that may be ambiguous for readers; consequently, its ability to define or explain such elements is limited. Likewise, its aptitude to ‘choose familiar, legally accurate words’ is also compromised, especially in view of the training-based nature of its responses.

Indeed, the six chatbots under scrutiny did not show the ability to interpret legal terms in context and legal subtleties accurately. Users need certainty and clarity when addressing legal concepts.

Therefore, chatbots are currently unsuitable for the easification or disambiguation of legal communication and making it understandable and usable for its intended audience.

Although AI may seem to provide sensible responses, inexactness and approximation come to the fore when analysing outputs in detail. This means that AI-generated responses are not reliable and consistent, as they can differ from one query to another.”

Giampieri, P., “Can GenAI identify and disambiguate legal polysemous terminology? a critical analysis in light of ISO 24495-2:2025 on legal communication” (2026) Iura & Legal Systems

#LegalTranslation #LegalConcepts #GenAI #Accuracy #LegalLanguage

#legaltranslation #νομικημετάφραση #legaltranslation Terminology

Legal translation quotes

By John O 'Shea on October 5, 2026 in Legal Translation, Μεταφράσεις νομικών κειμένων, Νομική μετάφραση

“In legal contexts, translation does not merely convey information; it can shape the operative force of a document. If a machine translation changes the scope of a clause, weakens a condition, or substitutes a general term for a legally defined one, the translated text may carry a different normative effect from the source text.

This problem is especially serious in legally binding texts such as contracts, regulations, and judgments, where the translated version may be relied upon for legal interpretation or enforcement.

Machine learning systems are not inherently aware of these consequences, because they optimise for probabilistic plausibility rather than legal equivalence. accuracy is inseparable from the goal of achieving an equivalent, uniform legal effect. Unlike general or literary translation, legal translation operates within tightly constrained systems of meaning shaped by jurisdiction-specific norms, institutional practices, and codified terminology.

A mistranslation in this domain is not merely a semantic error; it can alter rights, obligations, and legal outcomes, potentially leading to financial loss, contractual disputes, or miscarriages of justice.”

#LawyersOfLinkedin #AI #MT #AlteredMeaning

Pinčić, Domagoj & Bajcic, Martina. (2026). Challenges of the Legal Translation Task in the Context of Machine Learning. 10.5281/zenodo.22765851.

#legal translation #νομικημετάφραση #legaltranslation

Legal translation quotes

By John O 'Shea on September 28, 2026 in Legal Translation, Legal Translation Quotes, Μεταφράσεις νομικών κειμένων, Νομική μετάφραση

“Legal translation is widely recognised as a high-stakes, domain-specific activity in which linguistic accuracy is inseparable from the goal of achieving an equivalent, uniform legal effect. Unlike general or literary translation, legal translation operates within tightly constrained systems of meaning shaped by jurisdiction-specific norms, institutional practices, and codified terminology. A mistranslation in this domain is not merely a semantic error; it can alter rights, obligations, and legal outcomes, potentially leading to financial loss, contractual disputes, or miscarriages of justice.”

Pinčić, Domagoj & Bajcic, Martina. (2026). Challenges of the Legal Translation Task in the Context of Machine Learning. 10.5281/zenodo.22765851.

#lawyersOfLinkedin #rights #AI #MT

#legal translation #νομικημετάφραση #legaltranslation

When translation choices reach the courtroom: lessons from Hellenic Supreme Court Judgment No. 221/2026

By John O 'Shea on September 15, 2026 in English legal language and terminology, Greek legal language and terminology, Legal Translation, translation of legal documents, Μεταφράσεις νομικών κειμένων, Νομική μετάφραση

Ορισμένες πρώτες σκέψεις σχετικά με την απόφαση 221/2026 του Αρείου Πάγου.

Η υπόθεση αφορούσε ένα μακροχρόνιο έργο αιολικής ενέργειας, στο οποίο συμμετείχαν μια ελληνική εταιρεία ανάπτυξης έργων και ένας Ισπανός επενδυτής. Παρότι το έργο επρόκειτο να κατασκευαστεί στην Ελλάδα, η μεταξύ τους σχέση διεπόταν από συμβάσεις συνταγμένες στην αγγλική γλώσσα.

Όταν η σχέση αυτή οδηγήθηκε τελικά σε ρήξη, ο Ισπανός επενδυτής επέδωσε εξώδικη δήλωση με την οποία γνωστοποιούσε ότι είχε αποφασίσει να «terminate the … Contracts and withdraw from the Project».

Η έννοια και οι έννομες συνέπειες της δήλωσης αυτής αποτέλεσαν αντικείμενο της δίκης. Τα δικαστήρια που εξέτασαν την υπόθεση ασχολήθηκαν με το συμβατικό λεκτικό και τις ελληνικές μεταφράσεις.

Για περισσότερα, διαβάστε το άρθρο. ⬇️

Hellenic Supreme Court Judgment No. 221/2026 [1] contains an unusually useful example of translation becoming part of the legal problem in a cross-border dispute.

The underlying case concerned a long- running wind-energy project involving a Greek developer and a Spanish investor. Their relationship was governed by English-language contracts. When that relationship eventually broke down, the Spanish investor served an extrajudicial notice stating that it had decided to “terminate the … Contracts and withdraw from the Project”. The meaning and legal effect of that declaration became part of the litigation. The courts had to consider the contractual language, the Greek translations relied upon by the parties and the legal mechanism that the notice was attempting to exercise

The way the documents had been translated had become relevant to the court’s legal analysis of the dispute.

When terminology becomes part of the argument

The central translation issue concerned the English terms “withdrawal” and “withdraw”. The parties had produced different Greek renderings of the same contractual language. In the Framework Agreement, the Greek developer translated the heading “Withdrawal” as «Υπαναχώρηση». The Spanish investor’s translation used «Απόσυρση». Within the operative provisions of the Spanish investor’s own translation, however, “withdraw from their obligations” was rendered using «υπαναχώρηση», and the same term appeared again in the provisions describing the consequences of exercising that right. The Court of Appeal expressly identified the inconsistency.

That finding has an immediate practical significance for lawyers. A translation commissioned during the early stages of a matter may still be sitting in the file several years later when the meaning of the underlying provision becomes disputed. The terminology adopted at that earlier stage can then be compared with later translations of notices, correspondence, pleadings and exhibits. If the same contractual mechanism has been rendered differently across the record, counsel may have to explain why. In Judgment No. 221/2026, the inconsistency was visible to the court and formed part of its assessment of the competing terminology.

The legal significance of the words also depended on context. The Court of Appeal considered «υπαναχώρηση», «απόσυρση» and «αποχώρηση» in light of the contractual mechanism created by the relevant provisions and the legal consequences attached to it. It concluded that, in this particular contractual setting, “withdrawal” and “withdraw” were to be understood from the viewpoint of Greek law as «υπαναχώρηση» and «υπαναχωρώ». That reasoning is useful precisely because it is contextual. An English verb that appears straightforward at first sight may acquire a much narrower legal significance once it is placed inside a clause dealing with the exercise of a particular contractual right.

For counsel, this creates a clear risk-management issue. A translation can contain language that is perfectly intelligible and still create difficulty because the chosen terminology does not sit coherently with the legal mechanism expressed elsewhere in the contract. The problem becomes more serious where several translations have been commissioned at different times and the terminology has drifted. Once the dispute reaches court, those choices become part of the documentary history of the case.

Terminology drift

Cross-border disputes rarely arrive fully formed. They develop over time[2]. An agreement may be translated when advice is first sought. Correspondence may be translated months later. An extrajudicial notice may be prepared during an escalation of the dispute. Pleadings, exhibits and witness material may follow. Appeals and cassation proceedings can generate further translation requirements. The same underlying contractual concepts may therefore reappear in documents produced years apart.

That makes translation consistency a case-management issue. The important question is whether recurring concepts have been treated coherently across the file. Counsel should know how a key term was translated in the agreement, whether the same terminology was used in subsequent correspondence, and whether a later translation introduces a different Greek expression for the same contractual mechanism. If a change is deliberate, it should be capable of explanation. If it has happened accidentally because a later document was translated without access to the earlier material, the file has acquired an avoidable vulnerability[3].

Judgment No. 221/2026 gives this point real substance. The court did not examine one translated sentence in isolation. It moved across the Framework Agreement, the Project Agreement, the parties’ respective translations and the December 2015 notice. Earlier terminology informed the analysis of the later declaration. The documents formed a chain. For lawyers managing a bilingual dispute, the translation process needs to reflect that same chain.

This has implications for the way instructions are given. A translator dealing with an operative notice may need the underlying agreement and its existing translation. A translator working on pleadings may need to see the terminology already adopted in the evidence. Where a concept is genuinely ambiguous, counsel may need to decide how that ambiguity should be handled before the translation is finalised. Those steps reduce the chance that terminology will develop independently across documents that will ultimately be read together.

The legal effect of a few words

The December 2015 notice brought these issues into focus. Its English text stated that the Spanish investor had decided to “terminate the … Contracts and withdraw from the Project”. The Court of Appeal considered that the wording raised a question about the juridical character of the declaration, because the two expressions potentially pointed towards different legal mechanisms.

The court then examined the consequences contemplated by the notice. Among other things, the Spanish investor proposed the transfer of its shares in the project company for a nominal price. That consequence corresponded with the contractual mechanism provided for in Article 5.2 of the Framework Agreement in connection with withdrawal. The court therefore characterised the declaration as an exercise of contractual υπαναχώρηση.

For a lawyer reviewing a translation, this is an important point of method. Operative language has to be read through the legal function of the document. A notice may be exercising a right, triggering a contractual consequence or attempting to bring a legal relationship to an end. A translation choice affecting the characterisation of that act deserves a different level of scrutiny from a purely descriptive passage in the factual record.

That distinction is easy to miss where the disputed English word appears ordinary and is not a term of art. “Withdraw” is common language. In this case, it was connected with a contractual right carrying defined conditions and consequences. A translator who treats the word as an isolated lexical problem may produce a fluent version while missing the legal architecture around it. Counsel then inherits that decision when the document is relied upon in proceedings.

The judgment provides another example in the word “feasibility”. Article 3.5 of the Project Agreement referred to the project’s “technical and financial feasibility”. One translation rendered the term as «βιωσιμότητα». The Court of Appeal considered «σκοπιμότητα» the appropriate rendering in the context of the provision.

The point is useful because “feasibility” does not immediately look like a difficult legal term. Within Article 3.5, however, it formed part of the condition governing whether the investor could exercise its right to withdraw from the project. Its importance came from the work it was doing in the clause.

Commercial contracts contain many expressions of this kind. “Material”, “reasonable”, “completion”, “default”, “acceptance”, “notice”, “cause” and similar words can acquire considerable significance through their contractual function. Their translation requires attention to the surrounding rights, obligations and consequences. The presence of familiar vocabulary should not encourage a lighter review where the clause itself performs important legal work.

For counsel, the practical implication is straightforward. Review effort should follow legal significance. A term embedded in a provision governing termination, withdrawal, liability, payment, default or another important contractual mechanism deserves close attention even if the English itself appears routine.

The risk often lies in the relationship between the word and the clause, not in the word viewed on its own.

AI does not remove the need for file-level verification

The same issue arises when machine translation or generative AI is incorporated into the workflow. Glossaries and terminology instructions can improve consistency across large volumes of material. They are useful tools, particularly where a case contains recurring technical or contractual language. Their effectiveness still needs to be verified against the documents that matter.

Generative systems produce language probabilistically. A preferred term may be supplied in a glossary and still appear differently in another passage. The system may preserve the chosen word while misunderstanding the legal relationship expressed by the clause. Large-scale use therefore creates a practical review question for counsel: have the legally significant occurrences actually been checked against the agreement and against the terminology already used elsewhere in the file?

That question becomes particularly important where translation work is divided across several stages of a dispute. An AI-assisted translation of a new notice may be linguistically polished and internally coherent while departing from terminology established years earlier in the contract. Without a case-level review, the divergence may remain invisible until the documents are placed side by side in proceedings.

Translation risk

Judgment No. 221/2026 does not support the claim that the Spanish investor lost because of a bad translation. After the December notice had been characterised as an exercise of υπαναχώρηση, the courts still had to determine whether the contractual conditions for exercising that right had been met. Article 3.5 allowed withdrawal where the project’s technical or financial feasibility had proved insufficient under the relevant conditions. The Court of Appeal found that the notice did not specify whether the alleged inadequacy was technical, economic or both, and did not identify the supporting data. The attempted exercise of the right therefore failed on substantive grounds. The Supreme Court rejected the cassation challenge to that conclusion.

The translation issue nevertheless mattered because it formed part of the route by which the legal act was characterised. That is a realistic model of translation risk in contentious work. The danger is often cumulative. An inconsistent term, an unexamined synonym, a later document translated without reference to the underlying agreement, or an ordinary commercial word carrying an important contractual threshold can create an additional point requiring submissions and judicial analysis.

Cross-border litigation already contains enough genuine uncertainty. Translation should be managed so that it does not introduce further avoidable ambiguity into the record. Judgment No. 221/2026 shows how easily terminology can become part of the forensic material once a dispute turns on the legal effect of the documents themselves. For Greek lawyers working with English-language contracts, the case offers a practical reason to treat translated terminology as part of the case strategy from the outset, with the same attention to consistency, context and legal consequence that is applied to the original documents.

Litigation and contractual translation services at JurTrans

As Hellenic Supreme Court Judgment No. 221/2026 illustrates, commercial disputes often span years of agreements, correspondence, extrajudicial notices and court filings. Maintaining terminological consistency across those documents is essential if the translated record is to reflect the underlying contractual mechanisms accurately. At JurTrans, we have provided specialist Greek-English legal and financial translation services to Greek and international law firms for nearly three decades.

Led by John O’Shea (LL.B., LL.M.), we translate commercial contracts, extrajudicial declarations, pleadings, exhibits and Greek court judgments with close attention to file-level consistency and the existing terminology of the dispute. By cross-checking operative clauses against the wider documentary record and raising source-text queries with instructing counsel where appropriate, we help legal teams rely on their English and Greek translations with confidence. If you need translation support for cross-border litigation, arbitration or commercial contracts involving Greece or Cyprus, please contact Jurtans at info@jurtrans.com

JurTrans is a specialist legal translation company and does not provide legal advice. This article discusses translation issues arising from published case law for general information only.

#GreekLaw #LegalTranslation #ContractualDisputes

[1] https://shorturl.at/f0m4s. The judgment is in Greek.

[2] Scott, J., O’Shea, J. How Legal Documents Translated Outside Institutions Affect Lives, Businesses and the Economy. Int J Semiot Law 34, 1331–1373 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-020-09815-5

[3] Scott, J. & O’Shea, J., ‘Legal Systems Exposed: Translation and Vulnerabilities’ in Anne Wagner and Aleksandra Matulewska (eds), Research Handbook on Jurilinguistics (Edward Elgar Publishing 2023) 300 https://doi.org/10.4337/9781802207248.00029

#greeklaw #greeklawyers #legal translation #νομικημετάφραση #legaltranslation Greek legal language Greek legal terminology

Why ambiguity matters in legal translation

By John O 'Shea on September 13, 2026 in Legal Translation, translation of legal documents, Μεταφράσεις νομικών κειμένων, Νομική μετάφραση

I recently read a paper that got me thinking about the way ambiguity operates in legal texts, and in particular about what happens to that ambiguity when a text is translated into another language. Many of the points it raises are familiar from legal practice, but they take on an added significance in legal translation, where a choice of words can also become a choice between competing legal interpretations.

In Ambiguities in Normative Texts and Their Resolution in the Rule of Law[1], Pierre Moor argues that ambiguity is an unavoidable feature of legal systems. Legal rules are expressed through ordinary language, applied to facts that are often uncertain, and expected to govern situations that legislators cannot fully anticipate. Ambiguity therefore arises at several stages: in establishing what happened, in interpreting the legal text, and in deciding whether a particular set of facts falls within a legal concept. Courts are required to resolve these uncertainties and to justify the reasoning by which they do so.

The paper is a useful read for anyone interested in legal translation because it explains, from the perspective of legal theory, why difficult legal texts are difficult in the first place. For lawyers commissioning translations, including translations from Greek into English, many of the most challenging problems arise where language, legal concepts, factual circumstances and institutional practice interact. A translator may be able to identify a plausible English equivalent for every Greek word in a sentence and still face a serious question about what the provision means in law, how broad the relevant concept is, or whether the source text deliberately leaves room for more than one interpretation.

Moor’s discussion of legal language is particularly relevant here. He points out that legal norms have to be communicated through ordinary language and therefore inherit the ambiguities of ordinary language. Legal concepts are expressed through words, but their application depends on whether a particular real-world situation falls within the category represented by those words. His example of a “forest” makes the point clearly. Everyone has a general understanding of what a forest is, but a legal rule protecting forests immediately raises further questions when applied to a particular wooded area. Its size, ecological role, composition and place in the landscape may all become relevant to determining whether it is a “forest” for the purposes of the legislation. The difficulty lies in the legal scope of the category, and that difficulty remains present when the term is translated into another language.

This has an important consequence for legal translation. Ambiguity in a source text may be legally significant and may need to survive the translation. A translator who renders the provision in broader terms may produce fluent English, but would also have made a substantive interpretative choice about the scope of the rule. In litigation, arbitration, regulatory proceedings or contractual disputes, a choice of that kind may matter considerably.

Moor’s idea of “normative density” is also useful for thinking about translation. Some legal concepts are relatively precise and lend themselves more readily to deductive application. Others, including concepts such as “fault”, “just cause” and “public interest”, require an assessment of the circumstances and cannot be applied mechanically. The lower the normative density of a concept, the more room there is for judgment about whether the facts fall within it. The same distinction affects translation. A tightly defined procedural term may have a relatively stable rendering in English, whereas an open-ended concept may depend heavily on the statutory context, the relevant case law and the legal culture in which it operates. This is particularly important where the source and target languages belong to different legal traditions.

Greek-to-English legal translation illustrates the problem well. English terminology carries its own legal associations, and an apparently obvious English equivalent may suggest doctrines, procedures or institutional arrangements that are different from those of Greek law. The issue becomes especially acute with terms that have familiar-looking English counterparts. A translation may read smoothly and convincingly while leading an English-speaking lawyer towards a concept derived from English law rather than the concept operating in the Greek source. Careful translation therefore requires attention to the legal function of a term within its source system, the purpose of the document and the expectations of the intended reader. Depending on the context, the best solution may be a conventional functional equivalent, a more literal rendering that avoids importing unwanted associations, or an explanatory formulation.

The paper also helps to clarify the relationship between translation and interpretation. Moor’s judges are constantly engaged in interpretation because legal texts do not always determine their own application. When ambiguity exists, the judge must choose between possible readings and provide reasons for that choice. Moor distinguishes between arguments drawn from within the legal system and arguments that draw on wider social knowledge, political culture, experience and ideas of fairness. Translators also make interpretative decisions, although their institutional role is very different. A judge has authority to resolve a legal ambiguity. A translator generally does not. For that reason, where several interpretations of a source expression are genuinely possible, considerable care is required before the translation silently commits the reader to one of them. Preserving the ambiguity, choosing terminology that leaves the question open, or alerting the instructing lawyer to the issue may be preferable, depending on the purpose of the translation.

This is also where current enthusiasm for AI in legal translation needs to be treated with caution. AI may be useful for generating an initial draft, suggesting terminology, comparing possible formulations or identifying passages that deserve closer attention. It does not remove the interpretative problems described by Moor. A language model may produce a seemingly highly fluent English version of a difficult legal passage while obscuring the fact that the source admits more than one reading. It may choose the most statistically or linguistically plausible interpretation without recognising that the ambiguity itself carries legal significance. It can also select an English legal term that appears semantically close while importing concepts associated with a different legal system. In that sense, fluency can make the problem harder to detect, because the resulting text may appear authoritative and settled even where the source is neither.

AI also cannot supply the institutional judgment that Moor describes. His account of legal reasoning depends on context, legal authority, argumentation and an understanding of how a particular legal system treats an open-textured concept. An LLM may help retrieve or organise relevant information, but the decision that a Greek term should be translated in one way rather than another may ultimately depend on the purpose of the translation, the procedural setting, the surrounding legislation, relevant case law and the consequences of choosing one interpretation over another. These are questions that require legal and translational judgement. The greater the ambiguity of the source and the greater the legal consequences of resolving it, the less sensible it is to treat machine-generated fluency as evidence that the underlying problem has been solved.

Moor’s broader conclusion is that ambiguity has a legitimate place within law because it allows legal rules to remain responsive to circumstances that could not have been fully anticipated when they were drafted. That conclusion has an important implication for anyone commissioning a legal translation. Quality cannot be assessed only by the smoothness of the English or by whether each source-language term appears to have received a neat equivalent. A good legal translation must also preserve the distinctions, uncertainties and interpretative possibilities that matter in the source legal system. In difficult cases, some of the awkwardness belongs to the law itself.

For lawyers dealing with complex cross-border matters, Moor’s paper is therefore useful well beyond its immediate subject. It provides a theoretical explanation for something experienced legal translators encounter in practice every day: legal meaning does not sit neatly inside individual words waiting to be transferred from one language to another. It emerges from the relationship between text, legal concepts, facts, institutions and interpretation. Any translation process, whether human or AI-assisted, that overlooks those relationships risks producing English that is perfectly readable and legally wrong.

How JurTrans approaches complex Greek-English legal translation

When commissioning a translation of a Greek contract, statute or pleading, the instructing lawyer needs confidence that the English version neither flattens deliberate statutory ambiguity nor introduces unintended common law associations. JurTrans is a boutique legal and financial translation company founded in 1997 by John O’Shea (LL.B., LL.M.), providing specialist Greek-to-English and English-to-Greek translation services for law firms, businesses and international clients.

Because our work is grounded in formal legal education and nearly three decades of practical translation experience across Greek and Cypriot law, we examine each document within its procedural and statutory setting before settling on the appropriate English rendering. Where a Greek provision is open to more than one reading or contains a potential source-text inconsistency, we preserve the integrity of the original and flag the issue for the instructing lawyers so they can assess its legal implications. To discuss a Greek or Cypriot legal translation requirement, please contact Jurtrans at info@jurtrans.com

JurTrans is a specialist legal translation company and does not provide legal advice. Questions concerning the legal interpretation or consequences of a document should be addressed to qualified legal counsel.

[1] Moor, P. (2026). Ambiguities in Normative Texts and Their Resolution in the Rule of Law. In: Wagner, A. (eds) International Handbook of Legal Language and Communication. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-87993-7_89-1

#νομικημετάφραση Legal language Legal translation translation of legal documents νομικές μεταφράσεις

Why Clients Choose JurTrans for Greek-English Legal Translation

By John O 'Shea on September 11, 2026 in Legal Translation, Νομική μετάφραση

When legal documents cross borders, the challenge is not simply one of language. Different jurisdictions organise legal concepts differently, use different procedural terminology and often have no exact equivalent for terms that appear straightforward on the page. For clients working between Greece, Cyprus and English-speaking jurisdictions, those differences can have real consequences.

This is where specialist legal translation adds value.

JurTrans works exclusively in the Greek-English legal and financial field, helping law firms, businesses, institutions and private clients use translated documents with confidence. The aim is not only to produce text that is linguistically accurate, but to ensure that it makes sense in its legal context and is appropriate for the purpose for which it will be used.

That requires judgement. A term that appears to have an obvious English equivalent may carry a different procedural or institutional meaning in Greek or Cypriot law. A literal rendering may be understandable but misleading. A phrase that is acceptable in one legal system may sound unnatural, imprecise or even suggest a different legal effect in another.

By combining linguistic expertise with detailed familiarity with Greek, Cypriot, UK and European legal terminology and practice, JurTrans helps clients avoid those problems. The result is clearer drafting, more reliable terminology and fewer ambiguities in documents intended for litigation, corporate transactions, contracts, regulatory matters and other situations where precision matters.

Experience also plays an important role. After almost three decades and tens of millions of translated words across legal and financial subject areas, recurring terminology, procedural distinctions and jurisdiction-specific conventions are familiar territory. That accumulated knowledge allows potential issues to be identified early and handled consistently.

The rise of generative AI has made instant translation easier than ever. It has also made it easier to produce text that sounds convincing while being subtly or plainly wrong. In legal work, fluency is not the same as accuracy. A polished sentence can still contain a false equivalence, omit an important distinction or introduce terminology that is inappropriate for the relevant jurisdiction.

For this reason, the human element remains central to the JurTrans approach. Technology is used where it genuinely improves consistency, efficiency and terminology management, but every text is subject to professional judgement and careful review. Clients also benefit from confidentiality, accountability and the ability to ask questions or resolve uncertainties with a specialist who understands both the source document and its legal setting.

Ultimately, good legal translation should reduce friction rather than create it. It should allow the reader to focus on the substance of the document without being distracted by awkward language, uncertain terminology or hidden ambiguity. That is the practical benefit JurTrans aims to provide: accurate, dependable legal communication across jurisdictions, with the expertise and scrutiny that high-stakes documents require.

#greeklaw #greeklawyers #legal translation #legaltranslation #νομικημετάφραση #legaltranslation Greek legal language Greek legal translation νομικές μεταφράσεις

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Author: johnoshea

A dispute about what the lawyer said

Which record was more complete?

Two different evidential questions

Why the precise wording mattered

The Review Officer recognised translation difficulties elsewhere

Who checks the evidence when the decision-maker cannot read the original?

The judge spotted ChatGPT. Why didn’t the lawyers?

A witness letter with an unexpected ending

The judge’s criticism

Judicial tolerance is not judicial approval

A different warning from the cases already emerging

Who takes responsibility?

A warning worth taking seriously

Understanding the structure of a Greek court judgment

When is a Greek court judgment final?

Errors in the original Greek judgment: an overlooked translation problem

Why relying on AI-generated summaries of Greek judgments is risky

What does research tell us about AI translation from Greek into English?

Preparing Greek judgments and appeal documents for international readers

Frequently asked questions about translating Greek court judgments

Does a Greek court judgment need to be translated in full?

What should be provided when commissioning a Greek court judgment translation?

Greek court judgment and appeal translation services at JurTrans

Litigation and contractual translation services at JurTrans

How JurTrans approaches complex Greek-English legal translation

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