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Category: Νομική μετάφραση

Can’t I just use AI translation for my Greek property contract?

By on December 6, 2025 in Legal Translation, translation of legal documents, Μεταφράσεις νομικών κειμένων, Νομική μετάφραση

You’ve found a property in Greece. The contract arrives. It’s twenty pages of dense Greek text, notarial stamps, legal terminology you don’t recognise. You open ChatGPT or Google Translate, paste in a section, and get back what looks like fluent English sentences that seem to make sense.

Can you rely on this to understand what you’re signing?

The short answer: online tools can help you get the gist of an email or a brief description, but they’re not enough to rely on for a something as important as a binding property contract. The risks aren’t theoretical. They’re concrete, costly, and entirely avoidable.

Can’t I just use AI translation for my Greek property contract?

What artificial translation tools actually do

I use the term artificial translation for machine translation and generative AI tools that work by predicting the most statistically likely word or phrase based on patterns in vast amounts of text data. They don’t understand meaning generally. They don’t know law in particular. They especially don’t know or understand Greek property law. They optimise for fluency, producing output that reads smoothly in English. They do not aim for legal accuracy.

The tools are indeed fast, free, and useful for getting a rough sense of texts written in a general language. That’s their strength. But those same characteristics become limitations when you’re dealing with legal documents. Tools like these have no legal training. They accept no liability for errors in the output. They don’t understand your specific transaction, the Greek legal system the document comes from, or the legal system you’re familiar with in your home country. They can’t assess how you might interpret a legal concept based on your own jurisdiction’s framework, and they certainly won’t flag when a Greek legal term doesn’t map neatly onto an English equivalent.

The special features of Greek property contracts

Greek property contracts aren’t simple agreements. They’re long, dense notarial deeds with formulaic but highly complex legal and procedural language and very particular terminology. The structure is standardised, but the content varies significantly depending on the property, its history, and the transaction terms.

A typical contract includes a detailed description of the property, often referencing cadastral numbers, boundaries, and adjoining properties. It sets out the ownership history: who owned the property previously and how title passed. It lists encumbrances: mortgages, prenotations, easements, rights of way, planning restrictions. It includes declarations by the seller about the property’s legal status, tax compliance, and any pending disputes. It specifies payment terms, penalties for breach, and conditions that must be met before completion. If the property is part of a building with multiple owners, the contract incorporates co-ownership rules governing shared spaces, maintenance obligations, and decision-making, among other things.

Small wording differences in these sections can have significant consequences. A mistranslation of a condition precedent could mean you think a payment is due on signing when it’s actually due only after a specific event occurs. An error in describing an encumbrance could leave you unaware that a third party has legal rights over part of your property.

Accountability

One of the core risks of using artificial translation tools for your contract is there is no accountability if something goes wrong.

Artificial translation tools explicitly disclaim responsibility for errors. Their terms of service make clear that outputs are provided “as is” without warranties of accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose. If you rely on an AI-generated translation and sign a contract based on a misunderstanding caused by a mistranslation, you have no recourse against the tool provider. Whether that’s right or not is a different matter. It is what their terms of service state.

You as the buyer carry the risk. If the mistranslation means you didn’t understand a key obligation and you breach the contract as a result, you’re liable for the penalties specified in the Greek text regardless of what the artificially-generated translation led you to believe.

Contrast this with working with a professional translator.

A specialist legal translator has professional duties: to translate accurately, to flag ambiguities, to maintain confidentiality, to apply appropriate expertise.

Many carry professional indemnity insurance. If an error occurs, there’s a clear accountability trail and a mechanism for addressing the problem. That doesn’t eliminate risk entirely, but it certainly distributes it more appropriately than placing the entire burden on you as a non-Greek-speaking buyer trying to assess a document you can’t verify.

When artificial translation can still be useful

Artificial translation isn’t useless.

It’s useful for “gist only” purposes: skimming a short email from an estate agent to understand the general topic before you reply, getting a very rough sense of a property listing to decide whether it’s worth pursuing, checking the broad content of a brief document before you send it to a professional.

The key is recognising the limitation.

These tools give you a rough approximation. They help you orient yourself. They don’t give you reliable information to base decisions on.

If you’re using artificial translation to get a rough sense of a document, that’s fine, as long as any actual decision-making is based on a proper human translation and legal advice.

Use the AI output to decide whether to pursue the property. Don’t use it to decide whether to sign the contract.

What a specialist human translator adds

A specialist Greek-to-English legal translator brings deep familiarity with Greek property terminology and notarial style. They know how υποθήκη differs from προσημείωση, how επικαρπία works under Greek law, what οριζόντια ιδιοκτησία entails in practice. They recognise formulaic phrasing and know which variations matter legally and which are just stylistic.

They can resolve ambiguities. When a Greek clause could be read two ways, a specialist translator applies legal knowledge and context to determine the intended meaning, then renders it clearly in English. If genuine ambiguity remains (if the Greek text itself is unclear, which it often is I my experience),  they flag it so you can seek clarification before signing.

They ensure consistency across all related documents. A Greek property transaction typically involves multiple documents: the main contract, powers of attorney, land registry extracts, cadastral certificates, co-ownership rules if the property is part of a building, tax clearance certificates. Terms and concepts need to be translated consistently across all these documents so you can understand how they relate to each other. If one document refers to a δουλεία (easement) and another mentions a δικαίωμα διόδου (right of way), you need to know whether these are the same encumbrance described differently or two separate rights. A specialist translator maintains that consistency and explains the relationships.

They collaborate with your lawyer. A good legal translator doesn’t just produce an English text and disappear. They’re available to answer follow-up questions, to explain why a particular term was translated a certain way, to clarify Greek legal concepts that don’t have direct English equivalents. If your lawyer spots something in the translation that needs clarification, the translator can go back to the Greek text, re-examine the context, and provide a more detailed explanation. That collaboration ensures the translation supports your legal advice rather than creating confusion.

A safe, realistic workflow for foreign buyers

Here’s a practical approach that uses artificial translation tools where they are helpful without exposing you to unnecessary risk:

Step one: Use artificial translation, if you wish, to get the broad context of emails or short texts from estate agents, sellers, or other parties. This helps you stay informed and respond promptly to routine communications.

Step two: Send the full Greek contract and all related documents to a specialist legal translator. Don’t try to translate only the “important” parts yourself. You can’t reliably identify which parts are important without understanding the whole document, and Greek contracts are structured so that critical information appears throughout, not just in obvious sections.

Step three: Have your own lawyer review the professional translation. Ideally, instruct a Greek lawyer who understands the local legal context and can verify that the contract protects your interests under Greek law. If you’re also working with a lawyer in your home country, share the translation with them so they can advise on any cross-border implications or help you understand Greek legal concepts in terms you’re familiar with, and interact with the Greek lawyer to do so if needs be.

Step four: Use follow-up questions to clarify any terms you still don’t understand before signing. If the translation includes a term like “horizontal property ownership” or “usufruct” and you’re not sure what practical obligations this creates for you, ask. A good translator or lawyer will explain it in plain language until you’re confident you understand what you’re agreeing to.

This workflow takes longer than pasting text into an online tool and signing based on the output. But it ensures you actually understand the contract you’re signing, which is the entire point.

Questions foreign buyers often ask

“Can I sign based on an artificially-translated summary my agent gave me?”

No. Your agent’s interests aren’t identical to yours. Basically, they want the sale to complete. Even if the agent is acting in good faith, they’re not qualified to assess the legal accuracy of an artificial translation or to identify risks that matter specifically to you. Get your own independent translation and legal advice.

“Is it enough to translate only the ‘important’ parts?”

No. You can’t reliably identify which parts are important without understanding the whole document. Critical obligations, conditions, and encumbrances appear throughout Greek property contracts, not just in sections with obvious headings. A restriction buried in a paragraph about property description might matter more than an entire section on standard warranties.

“What if my budget is tight? Can I translate just the first draft?”

If budget is a constraint, prioritise getting a professional translation of the final contract before you sign. Don’t spend money on translating draft versions unless there are specific clauses you need to negotiate and you need to understand the Greek wording to do that effectively. But the final version you’re actually signing must be professionally translated. The cost of translation is a small fraction of the property price and an even smaller fraction of the cost of discovering after completion that you misunderstood a key term.

“Do I really need both a lawyer and a translator?”

Yes. They do different things. The translator converts the Greek text into accurate English so you can read, and more importantly, understand it. The lawyer advises you on what the contract means legally, whether it protects your interests, what risks it creates, and what you should negotiate. You need to understand the document (translation) and you need to understand whether signing it is a good idea (legal advice). One doesn’t substitute for the other. In fact, having the translation empowers you; you can have a proper discussion about the transaction with your lawyer.

The decision you’re actually making

When you’re deciding whether to use artificial translation for your Greek property contract, you’re not deciding whether to save a few hundred euros on translation costs. You’re deciding whether to sign a legally binding agreement that will govern your ownership of a substantial asset based on information you cannot verify.

Greek property contracts are long, complex, and written in specialised legal language. Small errors in understanding key terms, encumbrances, or obligations can have significant financial and legal consequences. AI tools are useful for getting a rough sense of routine communications, but they’re not built for the accuracy and reliability that legal documents require.

For a binding Greek property contract, free artificial translation tools are too risky as a basis for signing.

If you’re buying property in Greece and need your contract and related documents translated, contact me for a professional translation. If you’ve already received an AI-generated translation and want an expert assessment of the problems in the output before you rely on it, I offer detailed reviews that walk you through the errors and explain what the Greek text actually says. Both services are available for a fee that reflects the specialist expertise required to handle Greek legal documents accurately.

Don’t sign based on a guess about what the contract says.

Get it translated properly.

Understand what you’re agreeing to.

And make your decision from a position of knowledge rather than hope.

 

One small word, one big safety risk

By on November 12, 2025 in Legal Translation, translation of legal documents, Μεταφράσεις νομικών κειμένων, Νομική μετάφραση

A large Greek manufacturing company operates multiple facilities across the country. Head office develops workplace safety policies in Greek, including detailed procedures for end-of-shift protocols. One policy specifies when workers must perform a critical safety step: “Μετά το πέρας της βάρδιας”: after the end of the shift.

At a facility in a different part of the country employing significant numbers of foreign workers, local HR staff receive the new safety policy from head office. They use generative AI to translate it into English. AI renders “Μετά το πέρας της βάρδιας” as “at the end of the shift.” The English version is distributed to foreign workers and sent to the external contractor hired to deliver safety training in English. No one at the facility checks the translation against the Greek source. The compliance team at head office never sees the English version. Translation is treated as an administrative task, not a safety matter requiring technical review.

The foreign workers can’t read Greek. They rely entirely on the English translation to understand their safety obligations. The external trainer uses the translated document to deliver the training. The trainer doesn’t read Greek either. Workers are instructed to perform the safety step “at the end of the shift” while the machinery is still running, while hazards remain active, during the final moments of operational activity. The Greek instruction said to wait until after the shift ends. The English version says to act while the shift is ending. One preposition moved the compliance window into a hazard zone.

The safety risk

The timing of a safety instruction defines when a worker is protected. “After the end of the shift” means the safety step occurs when equipment has been powered down, when moving parts have stopped, when the work environment has transitioned from active to safe. The instruction assumes hazards have been neutralised before the worker acts.

“At the end of the shift” relocates that action to the closing moments of work when machinery is still operational, when the environment remains hazardous. The worker performs the same physical action, but in a different risk context. The mistranslation doesn’t change what the worker does. It changes when the worker is exposed.

This is how language determines the scope of safety obligations. Words specify the conditions under which a duty arises. Legal scholars examining statutory interpretation have documented how temporal markers (words like “after,” “during,” “before”) define when legal obligations apply and when they don’t[1]. When those markers are mistranslated, the obligation shifts to a different point in time, governed by different factual conditions.

In workplace safety, that shift can mean the difference between a controlled environment and an active hazard zone.

The legal problem

The company’s compliance documentation shows workers followed the English procedures. Inspectors review training records, incident logs, and safety audits; all based on the translated policy. Everything appears compliant.

But compliance with the English version is not compliance with the policy the company actually issued. The Greek source required one action. The English translation required another. Workers performed the action the translation instructed them to perform, not the action the company’s safety management system required.

If an injury occurs, the company cannot demonstrate that its workforce followed the procedures designed to mitigate the specific risk. The procedures workers followed were created by the translation error, not by the company’s safety assessment. The company has lost the ability to show that the control measure it designed was actually implemented.

The translated policy became a shadow document; an instruction that looks authoritative, that workers rely on, that trainers use, but that doesn’t match what the organisation requires under its own safety framework.

Why it happened

The output was fluent. The sentence structure was natural. “At the end of the shift” sounds plausible in English. No one checked the translation because they assumed AI handles this correctly. That assumption may appear reasonable. Translation tools have indeed improved. They remain problematic. They remain tools. And critically, most users don’t have the expertise to verify output in languages they don’t speak. So they can’t spot mistakes like this.

The error wasn’t visible to anyone in the chain: not to the HR department that distributed the policy, not to the contractor who delivered the training, not to the workers who implemented it. The only person who could have caught it would need to read both Greek and English, understand workplace safety terminology in both languages, and recognise that the temporal relationship between the safety step and the end of the shift had changed.

That’s not a linguistic skill. It’s a specialised professional competence that sits at the intersection of translation, legal interpretation, and occupational safety.

What this means for compliance

When legal and safety documents cross language boundaries, the translated text determines how obligations are understood and implemented. If the translation changes when a duty applies, it changes what compliance looks like in practice.

This isn’t unique to workplace safety. Contracts, regulatory filings, court judgments, and corporate policies all rely on precise language to define when parties must act, when rights vest, when duties terminate. Mistranslation of temporal language (or indeed any language that defines the conditions under which an obligation arises) creates a gap between what the document requires and what people believe it requires.

That gap invalidates the compliance chain. You can’t prove you followed a procedure if the procedure you followed was created by translation error.

Professional legal translators understand this. We know that translating “μετά” as “at” instead of “after” isn’t a minor linguistic choice. It’s a change in when the legal or safety obligation applies. We verify temporal markers, cross-check procedural language, and flag discrepancies that shift the scope of what’s required.

AI tools don’t do that. They produce fluent output that sounds correct. They don’t understand that one preposition determines whether a worker is safe or exposed. They don’t know when “close enough” isn’t close enough.

For companies relying on AI translation for legal or safety documents, the risk is that the translation becomes the policy. And that nobody notices until something goes wrong.

[1] see for example R. H. Fallon, “The Meaning of Legal ‘Meaning’ and Its Implications for Theories of Legal Interpretation,” University of Chicago Law Review 82:1235

The failures no one discusses

By on October 28, 2025 in Legal Translation, translation of legal documents, Νομική μετάφραση

A lawyer I work with mentioned recently that they’d used machine translation for a client document. It had gone wrong. Not catastrophically, but enough to create confusion that took weeks to untangle. When I asked whether they’d flagged the issue or shared what they’d learned with colleagues, they looked at me like I’d suggested they make a formal confession.

What I’ve noticed from lots of recent discussions with lawyers, is they don’t like to talk about translation failures involving AI tools. Not publicly, not in professional forums, rarely even among peers. Why?

The obvious answer is liability. Admitting you used machine translation for client work, and that it produced an error that went unseen, opens questions about competence, due diligence, and whether you met your professional obligations, pretty much in the same way hallucinations in court filings do. No one wants to invite scrutiny from clients, regulators, or insurers by documenting their mistakes in a LinkedIn post or elsewhere.

But there’s something else at play. Using AI for translation often happens quietly, without formal documentation or approval processes. A junior associate runs a document through a tool to get the gist. A partner uses it for a quick check on foreign language correspondence. We’re told this is efficiency. Typically nothing about this is viewed through the lens of risk. When something goes wrong, acknowledging the failure means acknowledging the decision to use the tool in the first place, and explaining why that seemed appropriate at the time.

What happens, though, when these failures stay hidden? We lose the data we need to understand how and when machine translation actually fails in legal contexts. We can’t identify patterns. We can’t develop guidelines for appropriate use. We can’t warn colleagues about specific types of documents or legal concepts where automated tools consistently produce misleading translations.

The silence creates a perverse information asymmetry. Technology vendors can promote their tools with confident claims about accuracy and reliability.

Individual lawyers making decisions about whether to use these tools have access to marketing materials and demo scenarios but not to the accumulated evidence of how these systems perform in actual legal work.

How do you assess risk when the failures aren’t visible?

My point is not to shame anyone who’s used AI translation tools. However, we do need to create space for honest discussion of when these tools work, when they don’t, and what the consequences look like when they fail in legal contexts.

Professional judgement includes knowing when to rely on technology and when human expertise is non-negotiable. But that judgement depends on having accurate information about how these tools perform in practice, not just vendor promises about capabilities.

Until lawyers can discuss translation failures without fear of professional consequences, we’re making decisions about AI adoption based on incomplete information. And clients are the ones who bear that risk.

#legaltranslation #duediligence #riskawareness

The Sign Said What?

By on August 26, 2025 in Greek legal language and terminology, Legal Translation, translation of legal documents, Μεταφράσεις νομικών κειμένων, Νομική μετάφραση

“Alcohol consumption is prohibited by persons under the age of 17.”

This sentence appears on a sign I photographed while in Greece. It’s meant to inform customers that minors cannot be served alcohol.

The Greek reads: “Απαγορεύεται η κατανάλωση οινοπνευματωδών ποτών από άτομα κάτω των 17 ετών.”

Legal language slip-up: a sign that says minors forbid alcohol

Legal language slip-up: a sign that says minors forbid alcohol

The translation may look serviceable at first glance, but read it again.

What it actually says in English is that minors are the ones doing the prohibiting. That the act of prohibiting alcohol consumption is being carried out by persons under 17.

Which, of course, is nonsense.

The error is grammatical, but the consequences are legal.

Legal language needs to express the correct legal relationship.

Who is being restricted?

What conduct is being prohibited?

By whom?

In this case, the intention was to say that minors may not consume alcohol. That the law forbids it. A clearer version would be: “Persons under the age of 17 are prohibited from consuming alcohol.”

This is a minor example. But it shows how even short phrases can go wrong when you rely on automatic or inattentive translation.

The result can be incorrect, even misleading.

And in legal or quasi-legal contexts, that matters.

legaltranslation greeklaw ambiguity clarity commonsense nonsense

Can you trust a legal translation?

By on June 17, 2025 in Legal Translation, translation of legal documents, Μεταφράσεις νομικών κειμένων, Νομική μετάφραση

Legal translators don’t just translate.
We build trust: for lawyers, between legal systems, and across linguistic divides.
Most people think translation is about finding the right word.
In legal translation, it’s about safeguarding outcomes.
A lawyer’s client sees the final document, not the hours of legal-linguistic due diligence behind it.

They don’t know that the translator flagged an outdated reference, proposed a clearer clause, or traced a procedural citation to an older version of the law.
But they do know the document makes sense.

They do feel confident in the advice they’re given.

And that’s the point.

Legal translators don’t just render text. We reduce risk.

We don’t just aim for equivalence.

When a Greek lawyer hands over a translated writ or contract to an English-speaking client, the client reads it and says: “This makes sense. I understand my position.”

That’s not a linguistic win.

That’s a trust win.

And it’s hard-won.

Through careful attention, rigorous checking, and strategic choices about what needs clarification, and what needs footnoting or commenting on.

That’s what legal translators do when we’re doing our job well.

We make the lawyer look good.

We make the system make sense.

We make trust possible.

 

diagram

legaltranslation trustbuilding legalcommunication greeklaw

νομική μετάφραση

Reading legal documents critically as a legal translator

By on June 17, 2025 in Legal Translation, Μεταφράσεις νομικών κειμένων, Νομική μετάφραση

In a world increasingly flooded with AI-generated content, have we forgotten how to read critically?

A thought-provoking piece I read recently entitled “Promptism and the Forgotten Art of Source Criticism in the Age of AI” raises exactly that point.

It made me think about legal translation.

And how what it says about source criticism applies so powerfully to what we do as legal translators.

You’ve probably seen it too.

Legal texts fed through AI tools that come out sounding smooth, plausible, grammatically correct.

But as we all know (or should know ) legal translation isn’t about sounding smooth.

It’s about being right and precise.

The article talks about the illusion of fluency; how something that reads well can still be deeply flawed.

And in legal settings, flawed translations mean flawed understanding.

And flawed understanding can lead to real-world consequences.

When working on legal texts, especially ones involving rights, obligations, or procedural safeguards, “close enough” is not close enough.

This is where source criticism (the habit of actually going back to check, verify, and compare with the authoritative original) becomes a professional duty.

Not just a nice-to-have.

If you’ve ever run an AI-generated translation through its paces, you’ll know it rarely holds up under scrutiny.

Subtle distinctions missed.

References mistranslated.

Wording altered in a way that changes legal effect.

It doesn’t matter how confident or elegant the output appears. If it isn’t anchored in legal reality, it’s unusable.

And more than unusable, it’s potentially harmful.

That’s why I keep championing the role of expert human translators.

Because we legal translators don’t just “translate”. We verify, interrogate, and challenge the text.

We bring legal knowledge to the task.

We bring linguistic precision.

We do the checking so our clients don’t have to.

The message of that Promptism article is clear: don’t lose the habit of critical reading.

Don’t stop questioning what you’re shown.

In legal translation, that habit can and does make all the difference.

If you need Greek to English legal translations that go beyond the surface and actually hold up in practice, get in touch with us at #Jurtrans. Because close enough simply isn’t good enough.

 

ensuring accuracy in legal translation - critical reading: evaluating text for flaws / source verification: checking against original sources / legal knowledge application - applying legal expertise / linguistic precision - ensuring accurate wording. Jurtrans - Greek-English legal translations

LegalTranslation LegalAccuracy AIandLaw DueDiligence LegalTech GreekLaw

νομική μετάφραση

Judicial attitudes to machine translation

By on June 17, 2025 in Legal Translation, Μεταφράσεις νομικών κειμένων, Νομική μετάφραση

Can you base a legal argument on something you can’t fully understand?

Can you rely on something you know may be inaccurate? Can a court decide a case not fully understanding the evidence or knowing it may be inaccurate?

That’s the quiet conundrum courts are beginning to face with machine translation.

As legal systems increasingly encounter foreign-language evidence, and as machine translation tools creep into everyday use, we’re starting to see these tools referenced in English judgments. The attitudes of the courts are revealing, and at times, contradictory.

I reviewed recent case law* and one overarching pattern emerges: courts are pragmatic. They’ll accept a machine translation when nothing else is available. But they are also cautious, sometimes sceptical, yet rarely confident in what the technology produces.

In Apparel Fzco v Iqbal, Armeniakou v Thomson, and Eli Lilly v Genentech, the courts accepted machine-translated documents without much critique. These cases read as if the translation simply passed under the radar. A quiet admission into evidence without comment or concern. Not an endorsement, but certainly not a red flag either.

Contrast that with Joyvio Group v Quiroga Moreno and Abbott v Dexcom. Here, the courts acknowledged that MT has some utility but were careful to limit how much weight they gave it. Machine translation might help orient the reader. But when it comes to deciding rights, obligations, or liabilities, it’s background noise. Certainly not the main soundtrack.

And then there are cases like Secretary of State v LJ Fairburn & Son Ltd and El-Tawil v Comptroller General of Patents, where the courts do raise eyebrows.

“Somewhat erratic”

“Odd English”

“Not easy to follow”

“Doubtful translation“

These aren’t throwaway remarks.

They are judicial shorthand for “this isn’t reliable”, yet the judgments often stop there.

The concern is voiced, the translation doubted, but rarely interrogated in depth.

What emerges is a telling judicial inconsistency. Some judges treat MT as good enough. Others barely trust it to parse a sentence. And across the board, there is little examination of how translations are produced, who produces them, and how meaning might shift in the process.

This mirrors the findings Juliette Scott and I outlined in “Translation in Libel Cases: Reputations at Stake!”**.

Judicial approaches to translation vary not just across jurisdictions, but within them. Some courts scrutinise every nuance. Others assume equivalence where none exists.

The role of the translator is often invisible. The status of machine-generated text, undefined.

That matters.

Because legal texts are not just linguistic artefacts. They carry implications; they have legal effects. Meaning isn’t surface-level.

Machine systems don’t understand legal context. They don’t parse ambiguity. They don’t recognise subtext or intent.

They pattern-match.

And when the outcome of a case hinges on meaning, that’s not enough.

If judges are flagging the limitations of MT, lawyers should take note.

So what does this mean for legal practice?

Don’t walk into court with a rough idea of what the document says. Don’t submit a translation just because it’s fast, or free. Don’t assume the judge will catch and correct an error in a language they don’t speak.

Because in law, words aren’t just words. They’re tools. And sometimes, they’re weapons.

I think the overall message that emerges from these cases can be summarised as machine translation is merely a tool that is sometimes useful.

It might help orient the reader. It might support a rough understanding. But for anything beyond that, particularly where legal rights hang in the balance, it is no substitute for a trained legal translator.

Or to put it more bluntly: if your client’s liberty, liability, or livelihood is on the line, do you really want the judge in your case relying on a “somewhat erratic” translation?

No one reads a legal document as closely as a legal translator. Machines don’t come close.

If you’re litigating cross-border matters, or dealing with foreign judgments, pleadings, or scientific evidence, don’t settle for a “rough idea.” Insist on a version that is clear, legally accurate, and fit for purpose. Get the right translation. Get the right translator.

If you need a legal document in the Greek< >English combination feel free to reach out to us at JURTRANS TRANSLATIONS LTD.

#LegalTranslation #MachineTranslation #AccessToJustice #RuleOfLaw

*To identify the case I used “machine translation” as a search term in an online database of English case law.

** https://pressto.amu.edu.pl/index.php/cl/article/download/31723/29787/73271

νομική μετάφραση

The legal translator as detective

By on February 11, 2025 in Legal Translation, quality of legal translation, Μεταφράσεις νομικών κειμένων, Νομική μετάφραση

No one reads a legal text as closely as a legal translator in their effort to understand what it says and means, and to render that appropriately in another language.

While modern tech certainly has its uses, this is not one of them.

Today’s musings on legal translation were inspired by the sort of research I regularly need to do to be able to translate properly and accurately, so that the client gets a text that makes sense and is useable; an impeccable legal translation they can trust and rely on.

One particular sentence in the document I was translating referred to a specific article of the Greek code of civil procedure. It was cited as support for a set of procedural steps that were taken in proceedings (X did Y pursuant to Article Z). But something didn’t feel right. When I actually consulted Article Z of that code, I noticed that it was talking about something completely different.

My initial thought was it was just another of the classic mistakes one finds in Greek legal documents. That it was a case of the drafting lawyer having mistyped the article number.  That is the typical sort of thing I flag to my lawyer clients.

So I searched the nearby articles of the code to see if they were relevant. Nope.

I did a keyword search. Nothing relevant in the code.

Then it occurred to me what was going on. The reference to that article was not to the current version of the code but one of the older versions.

In recent years there has been a flurry of overhauls and major amendments to Greece’s core codes, including the code of civil procedure. Sometimes the pace of change in the codes can be dizzying.

Consulting a past version of the code I was able to identify what the sentence was actually referring to. Of course, having worked on the translations of all the major codes in recent years as part of the Lex Graeca project made the task of identifying the past version easier.

To ensure the end user of the translation fully understood what was being said in that section of the text, I proposed that the lawyer redraft the Greek text to make it clear that it was the older version of the code being referred to, not the current one. He agreed.

Happy drafting lawyer. Happy end user. Potential confusion avoided.

At Jurtrans, we do the head-scratching so you don’t have to. We offer legal translations that flag potential problems in the source text and offer work-arounds and solutions to ensure effective legal communication. We offer services that MT and AI can’t. We care about getting your legal communication right.

If you’re a Greek lawyer and want a diligently-researched, carefully-crafted English translation of a  Greek legal text, get in touch with us at info@jurtrans.com.

properly-researched Greek-English legal translations

Mistakes in Greek legal documents

By on January 31, 2025 in legal language, Legal Translation, quality of legal translation, translation of legal documents, Μεταφράσεις νομικών κειμένων, Νομική μετάφραση

Many lawyers seem to think they can just press a button and technology will miraculously produce a useable translation they can present to clients to aid understanding of legal provisions or help those clients grasp what their rights and obligations are.

Much has been written about how writing in simpler language makes it easier for the machine to “translate”.

Except, of course, legal language is hardly ever simple and straightforward. Words and concepts are connected to other provisions and concepts in a complicated web of meaning. And that meaning needs to come across in the translated version of the legal text. Unsurprisingly, machines fail a lot in relation to this.

But what if there are mistakes in the legal text?

Machines can’t identify mistakes. If the person reading the translated version doesn’t know the language the original document was written in, and isn’t expert in the relevant area of law, they may not be able to spot those issues. The lawyer who pressed the “translate” button may not be able to spot them either.

And talking of lawyers and law professionals not spotting things, I wanted to share some thoughts on errors in legal documents (be they contracts, articles of associations, pleadings, judgments, legislation, etc.), which are the sort of things we at Jurtrans typically translate.

Errors in Greek legal documents are very common.

Much more common than you’d imagine.

In 2024 we translated 946 Greek legal documents into English.

An astonishing 95% of them contained one or more errors of various types.

That’s a lot of errors.

And a lot of comments from us pointing out the errors and oversights in the Greek texts.

Getting an error-free legal text for translation from Greek to English really is the exception rather than the rule in our experience.

And many of those errors can have significant consequences if they aren’t spotted in time. More of which at another time …

To repeat the oft-heard phrase “no one reads a legal document as carefully as a legal translator”.  Machines certainly don’t have that capability because they simply match patterns, they don’t understand meaning.

So what sort of errors do we typically see?

  • Incomplete citations. For example, Article 95 is mentioned. But Article 95 of what? Of the contract the phrase appears in? Of the governing law? Of some other piece of legislation?  With our deep knowledge of Greek law we can often tell which piece of legislation is meant and can add a comment about that.
  • Incorrect citations. For example, the wrong governing legislation is cited, or the wrong article and paragraph number are cited, or the wrong judgment is cited.
  • Related to this, we frequently see legislation being cited that is no longer in force at the time the document was drafted. This happens a lot in company law texts when the old regime under Law 2190/1920 is cited despite the legislation being overhauled by Law 4548/2018.
  • Similarly, we often encounter numbers being reversed. Greek legislation has a numerical citation so (made up example) Law 1959/2008 could be cited mistakenly as Law 1995/2008.
  • Inconsistent paragraph / section numbering. Greek has its own unique numbering system based on Greek letters and characters. We often see lists omitting ‘στ’ (equivalent of ‘f) and going straight from ‘ε΄ το ‘ζ. Τhat can throw off the numbering scheme. It’s often the case that ‘στ’ is omitted at one location in the document but included in other locations. Likewise, we often see paragraph numbering jumping from say paragraph 3 to paragraph 5 with no paragraph 4 in between.
  • Another frequent problem is the drafting lawyer/judge mixes up who the parties are and what roles they hold. Plaintiff/claimant is confused with defendant at some point in the text, for example.
  • We often encounter sections of garbled text because of a copy-paste issue meaning part of a sentence is missing. The grammar / syntax is often messed up in this section of the text making it impossible to deduce what the correct intended meaning is.
  • Often there is a lack of logical flow in the argumentation or there are contradictions between what was said at the start of the text and what is said further down.
  • “Things left dangling” are quite frequent. For example a sentence may set up the logic of a disjunctive list (a or b) we only the information relating to ‘a’ is provided.
  • Subject-verb disagreement. Single subjects matched with plural verbs, or vice versa.
  • Single and plural nouns confused. Although the text refers to one buyer elsewhere it refers to several buyers.
  • Mistakes of fact, like saying such and such a place is in England when it is in Scotland.
  • Conflicting information in different parts of the text (for example a debt of a specific amount is mentioned at the start, but a higher / lower / other amount is mentioned further down)
  • Incorrect references to foreign legal documents.
  • On a related point, spelling mistakes in the English names of foreign legal acts or in foreign abbreviations, for example the General Rules for International Factoring being abbreviated as GRIP in the Greek text instead of GRIF.
  • Forgetting to consistently use “capitalised terms” that have been assigned a special meaning in the document.
  • Introducing capitalised terms that are nowhere defined in the document. For example in a lease defining the “Leased Property” in detail but then going on to call it the “Building”.
  • Related to the foregoing point, elegant variation in terms used, so an agreement is called just that (an “agreement”) in one paragraph, but is called a “contract” in another.
  • Use of incorrect terminology for the area of law or use of outdated terms that come from an older version of the legislation.
  • Ambiguously worded phrases where two or more possible intended meanings co-exist
  • Numbers written out in full do not match the numbers presented arithmetically.

Given our long years of professional experience in translating Greek legal texts into English, we can easily spot these errors and save egg on our clients’ faces. Machine translation and generative AI systems certainly can’t do that.

 

Translating the language of the law is hard

By on January 23, 2025 in Greek legal language and terminology, Legal Translation, translation of legal documents, Μεταφράσεις νομικών κειμένων, Νομική μετάφραση

Following on from yesterday’s musings on the utility of technological tools for legal translation purposes, let’s hear today what a lecturer in family law has to say about the topic:

“Regarding … improving family experiences, numerous AI-based tools are designed to support clients or lawyers, but their accuracy strongly depends on the case details.

No doubt automatised legal translators [sic] have rapidly pro­gressed in the last few years, yet their accuracy compared to the sworn translator can still be questioned. …

Yet, they tend to fall short in complicated matters, particularly highly contextual sentenc­es.

Additionally, as a scholar deeply immersed in Japanese family law, I can assess that the existing translators [sic] can mislead about the true sense of the content of the legal norms or documents and, thus, can be treated only as a support tool. …

Family law requires an exact understanding of the analysed text, including legal terms and human emotions that can be expressed in various ways, such as non-verbal messages. …

Given the noticeable number of international couples communicating with each other or their children in different languages, detailed knowledge about the family and personal situation cannot depend on auto­matic translation, which cannot grasp the significance of words and non-verbal mes­sages at this stage.

Conversely, clients seeking legal information through automated translations could find incomplete or false information.

Thus, despite the rapid pace of development of AI-based legal translations, family lawyers should consider em­ploying reasoning based on them as high-risk assumptions, mainly due to the ina­bility to grasp subtleties and cultural nuances.

This raises an essential question – is AI-based translation useful at all if a specialised human translator will probably al­ways be more accurate than machines and one step ahead, despite the slower work?”

Piegzik, M.A., “The Adoption of Artificial Intelligence in Family Law –
Brand New or Well-known Idea?” Folia Iuridica Universitatis Wratislaviensis
2024 vol. 13 (2), 26–51

I’d argue these considerations do not apply just to family law but to all branches of law.

The language of the law is hard. Translating the language of the law is hard.

It still confounds technology. There are no simple push-of-a-button solutions.

If you need help seeing through the hype and want someone to tell you the truth about what language technologies can and cannot do when it comes to translating legal documents from Greek to English and vice versa, book a 30-minute call here: https://lnkd.in/edMThP3c

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