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

By John O 'Shea 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.

#caveat emptor #greekproperty #legaltranslation #property in greece

One small word, one big safety risk

By John O 'Shea 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

#AI #legaltranslation #riskmanagement #workplacesafety

The failures no one discusses

By John O 'Shea 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 John O 'Shea 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

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 John O 'Shea 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

Mistakes in Greek legal documents

By John O 'Shea 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.

#greeklaw #greeklawyers #legaltranslation #quality of legal documents

Translating the language of the law is hard

By John O 'Shea 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

#greeklaw #greeklawyers #legal translation

Knowing where you stand

By John O 'Shea on January 22, 2025 in Greek legal language and terminology, legal language, Legal Translation, translation of legal documents, Μεταφράσεις νομικών κειμένων, Νομική μετάφραση

I’m all for technology. I use it all day, every day. But every technology has its limits (and its limitations).

Don’t we all wish that legal language was simple and straightforward and that you could just click a button and you’d have a clear understanding of what a foreign legal text actually says?

Then you’d know what your rights or obligations are.

You’d be able to converse intelligently with your legal counsel or your lawyer could explain things to you in terms you understand.

You’d be able to plan your next steps.

You’d know where you stand.

Nonetheless, 9 years after NMT went mainstream, and 2+ years after genAI was launched, legal language continues to confound technology.

By way of illustration, let’s take a sentence that would be straightforward for any Greek lawyer or experienced professional legal translator working in the Greek-English combination:

The sentence may be straightforward. But behind it is someone who needs to show they have not been accused of something serious. The words may look innocent on the screen but the real-life implications are huge.

It’s vital to get the translation right.

You don’t want just any old translation.

You want an impeccable translation you can rely on.

How the tech performed

Google Translate gives us this piece of incomprehensible garbage. Remember Google Translate has been working on fine-tuning its neural machine translation engines for 9 years now.

The “English” translation according to Google Translate

– This is neither fluent nor accurate.

– Is employee even correct here? Is the text not actually referring to a “civil servant”?

– What does “occupied the service” even mean?

– The employee occupied the service “due to disciplinary or criminal offences”. What does that even mean?

– Holiday? αργία can mean public/official holiday yes, but in a completely different context. This is a bit like opening a dictionary, seeing 10 different meanings of a word, and picking the first. It might be correct in some context. Not this one.

In law, context is king.

DeepL gives us this rendering:

The “English” translation according to DeepL

– Again this is neither fluent nor accurate.

– Again we have to ask whether employee is the right choice of term here.

– Why is the “suspended from duty” idea now in the first part of the sentence when the Greek is referring to the fact that the department/unit the person works for has not had to handle any disciplinary/criminal complaints against that person?

– “Placed on leave”. Does that fully convey the concept of αργία? Or is it only covering part of the concept? αργία/argia means you are (i) stripped of the right to perform your duties + (ii) you only receive half your salary. “Placed on leave” really doesn’t cut it.

– Placed on “suspension from duty”. Grammatically does that stand in English? It’s beyond awkward and definitely doesn’t flow. Let’s say αναστολή here does mean that the person is suspended from duty. Is that with pay or without pay? How is this concept related to the previous one (αργία)? How does the “translation” differentiate between the two so that the reader actually understands what is going on?

Chatgpt 4.0gives us this:

The “English” translation according to Chatgpt

– This is again not fluent English. Nor is it accurate.

– As with the other versions we have to ask whether “employee” is the correct term.

– The first half of the sentence sort of conveys the meaning but omits quite an important bit of information (that the place where this person works has not had to handle complaints against them). Let’s say you get some general idea. In legal settings, do you really only want to walk away with “some general idea”?

– The second half of the sentence doesn’t fluently link to the second half.

– If αναστολή is the concept of “suspended” why does Chatgpt render αργία as “placed on suspension”? Does it draw an adequate distinction between the terms? From the viewpoint of Greek law, the two terms are quite distinct (related yes, but distinct). Let’s say there is an element of “suspension” in αργία, does the English rendering this tool offers accurately and fully convey what the Greek concept is saying? Or does it not omit a huge part of the meaning? What of the point we highlighted above concerning reduction in pay? How does that get conveyed by the wording chosen here?

Reality check

If you’re an ordinary individual using these tools to get some idea of what the Greek text is saying, can you hand-on-heart say you really understand the Greek after reading these “English” renderings?

If you’re a Greek lawyer who has to explain what is going on to a foreign client, can you hand-on-heart say these various “English” renderings adequately convey what the Greek text says?

Would you feel comfortable relying on them in a professional context?

With tools like these you may gain speed.

“Translations” may be available at the click of a button.

But are the “translations” actually useable?

If you need a translation to understand a legal text or you’re a lawyer who needs one in their legal work, use a specialist legal translator.

Reach out to us at Jurtrans Translations for impeccably accurate Greek-English legal translations.

#greeklaw #greeklawyers #legal translation

Paying attention to detail

By John O 'Shea on October 18, 2024 in Greek language, Greek legal language and terminology, Legal terminology, Legal Translation, translation of legal documents, Μεταφράσεις νομικών κειμένων, Νομική μετάφραση

Today my timeline is filled with stories of the Greek Minister of Justice wanting to use AI-powered machine translation tools for interpreting in court settings and translating legal documents in various judicial proceedings. Settings where attention to detail should certainly matter.

The law is all about wielding words accurately (or deliberately wielding them in deliberately ambiguous ways). But let’s focus on the scenario where accuracy is what you’re after because you want / need to understand your rights and obligations in a legal setting; you want/need to make an important legal decision, etc.

In a post I did yesterday I stressed that the constancy of legal words is important; such constancy is important for a host of important reasons lawyers will immediately recognise, just some of which are legal certainty and the rule of law.

So I thought I’d run a little test connected to something I was working on.

I asked ChatGPT to translate a legal provision from Greek to English:

This is the output:

Sounds quite plausible and convincing.

But let’s not forget that MT/AI systems used in translation are known for creating the “illusion of fluidity”[1].

They’re also known for a whole series of other problems (omitting bits of the text, changing negative obligations into positive ones, inconsistent use of terms, made-up words, etc.) but they are not relevant to us today.

What’s relevant today is this “illusion of fluidity”. On first reading the translation seems to be ok. It seems right.

On closer reading, especially if you compare it with the original, you start to spot “issues”.

Are you even able to compare it to the original to be able to identify any issues?

In this particular case, the article comes from a convention that already exists in English so we can easily determine what is right and what’s not. The relevant article reads as follows:

Admittedly, the original and “translation” are very similar.

There are differences you can easily spot:

“Entitled to benefit” vs. “Entitled to avail himself of”:
“Willful misconduct on its part” vs. “His wilful misconduct”:
“According to the law of the court having jurisdiction over the matter” vs. “In accordance with the law of the court or tribunal seized of the case”:
“Considered equivalent to willful misconduct” vs. “Considered as equivalent to wilful misconduct”:
“Omission” vs. “Default”

Some are probably not that important (you get the general idea whether worded in one way or the other). Are you only after a general idea though? Or as a lawyer/client do you want to precisely understand what the text is saying?

Others change the legal meaning utterly.

It does get the specialist term “wilful misconduct” right. Other online tools get it wrong (deliberate poor management / deliberate mismanagement / wilful mismanagement).

Although I didn’t ask for it, ChatGPT added “its” “view” about the output generated:

Was it asked to provide simpler, more straightforward phrasing? We see a clear translational strategy here: opting for plainer language to make the text easier to read. Probably not a bad thing. Not the appropriate strategy though in this context.

It makes the bold assertion that both the original English text and its “output” are legally correct.

So I asked the obvious question:

ChatGPT generated this response:

If lawyers use precise wording “to avoid ambiguity” why does this system generate a “rough” translation?

So while I was focused on the details, and getting the translation “right”, our online tool was not.

ChatGPT provided an unofficial rendering of the provision. While the meaning may be “roughly the same”, it does not carry the same legal weight or and certainly doesn’t contain the precise wording as the official version.

Why does this matter?

Words matter in law … even translated words.

Established wording needs to be maintained.

Established wording is what lawyers will recognise and are used to working with.

Any deviation from established wording creates headaches.

Sticking to established wording saves users of the translation time, and avoids a lot of head-scratching and bewilderment of the type “so legally speaking what does that actually mean”?

Legal language is a “controlled” language. You cannot just use any old words you want.

Randomly generated “rough” translations introduce inefficiencies into lawyerly processes.

Randomly generated “rough” translations create false impressions of legal rules / legal obligations, especially if you aren’t an expert in that area of law; say, for example, you’re the client rather the lawyer.

Basically with tools like this you get “a translation”.

But …

Is it “the translation” you need?

Is it a translation you can use?

Is it a translation you can rely on in your lawyerly dealings?

Is it a translation you can trust?

It is a translation you can base decisions on?

Work with expert legal translators if you need your legal words to count.

[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/375697263_La_TA_neuronale_et_ses_defis_compte_rendu_d’une_experience_pedagogique_en_traduction_economique

#AI #greeklaw #greeklawyers #legal translation #NMT #Riskmitigation

Court of the Ice Court – some musings on machine translation and legal texts

By John O 'Shea on December 8, 2023 in Greek legal language and terminology, Legal Translation, quality of legal translation, quality of translation, translation of legal documents, Μεταφράσεις νομικών κειμένων, Νομική μετάφραση

Does reputation matter?

What happens when a supreme court plugs MT into its website?

Check out the images below:

errors in translated name of supreme court

Remember we are talking about Greece’s most important court. Not just any old court.

Note that the court’s full and proper name already appears on its website in English.

It’s the MT plug-in that consistently gets it wrong.

The versions that appear in the reel are just some of the many different variants that it comes up with.

Words in law matter – even translated words

Critics will say, he’s going on again about MT, and that the translation is provided for information purposes only so there’s nothing to worry about.

Critics will also say that the court is offering the public a service, doing us a favour.

Are they?

Nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact I’d say it’s a disservice. To reiterate: Words in law matter – even translated words

If the name of the court (something simple and straightforward) can’t be got consistently right, what does that say about the rest of the content generated?

Can anyone reading the machine-generated output think this is useful or helpful to them in any way?

When is a “service” not a service?

Let’s delve a little deeper into the idea that this is a service.

If you boil things down, a service is something you seek out, you pay for (typically) and which adds value.

A service involves doing something for someone that is valued.

It involves applying skill, competence and expertise for the benefit of another.

Providing automatically-translated versions of court judgments, while well-intentioned, hardly meets those requirements.

Broader considerations

It also raises several important legal policy and access to justice considerations.

Even if such translations are labelled as “for information purposes only” (often disclaimers like that are missing) and are viewed by some as better than no translation at all, there are valid counterarguments to consider:

Legal and Ethical Responsibility: Courts have a responsibility to ensure that their communications are clear, accurate, and accessible in the language of the court.

Why should that be any different if the court opts to provide translations?

Offering substandard translations could be seen as neglecting this responsibility, potentially undermining public trust in the judicial system.

Reliance and Legal Consequences: Relying on machine translations for legal decision-making, even when they are marked as “for information purposes only,” poses significant risks, especially for those without access to professional translation services.

Court judgments, like other legal documents, are filled with complex terminology and nuanced language that machine translation often fails to accurately capture.

This can lead to misinterpretations about legal rights, obligations, and the judgment’s implications, resulting in incorrect decisions or unnecessary time and expense spent consulting legal advisors to correct misunderstandings.

Equal Access to Justice: Access to justice implies that everyone, regardless of language proficiency, should have equal access to legal information.

By providing low-quality translations, non-native speakers are disadvantaged, potentially violating the principle of equality before the law.

Recommendations

To address these issues, several recommendations could be considered:

Clear Disclaimers and Guidance: Provide clear disclaimers about the limitations of machine translations and guiding individuals to seek professional translation or legal advice for critical matters.

Improving Translation Quality: Invest in higher-quality translation services, potentially combining machine translation with human review and editing, to ensure accuracy.

Consult with experts in legal translation: Develop a policy for your legal translations that helps reduce your exposure to reputational risk

Legal translation machine translation translating court judgments

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Category: translation of legal documents

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Words in law matter – even translated words

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