Tag: Legal translation

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 errors in translated name of supreme court 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

… following on from yesterday’s post about AI essentials for lawyers with some thoughts on how that relates to legal translation

1. Generative AI in the Legal Sector: Legal translators have a head start here. They’ve been using neural machine translation (NMT) for several years now.

While it can be helpful in some instances, it may not fully grasp the nuances of legal language or be suitable for all legal documents.

Expert human translators remain indispensable. Without them the risks are high.

2. AI’s long-term impact: Legal translators are no strangers to technological developments. They monitor those developments and integrate tools into their workflow when appropriate. They’ve been doing this for a long time and will continue to do so.

3. Opportunities and risks: Legal translations generated without any human involvement put you at risk of having a document in which legal terms and concepts have been misinterpreted.

This can lead to significant legal repercussions.

Cost reduction may be a legitimate objective but when the price is someone’s freedom, rights, money, etc.

4. Intellectual property and data risks: Legal translators are well aware of the data risks of free MT and AI platforms.

Client confidentiality is a key concern for the profession.

NDAs and codes of professional codes of ethics covering these matters are common.

Sensitive legal documents should not be put through free MT or AI systems

5. Cybersecurity risks: GDPR awareness among legal translators is high.

6. Integrity of output and ethical concerns: Legal translators are familiar with NMT, a form of AI, its uses, and shortcomings.

Omissions, inconsistent renderings of key legal terms, are common in such systems. All these affect integrity of the legal words being translated.

The output suffers from an “illusion of fluidity”. Your clients need accuracy not something that appears accurate.

Can you guarantee that?

7. Reputational risks: Poor translations resulting from over-reliance on AI can damage a law firm’s reputation in the eyes of its clients.

Lawyers should be wary of trusting the machine too much given the complex nature of legal language.

Do you have policies in place to manage these risks?

8. Regulatory and professional responsibilities: Consider your professional duty to act diligently and safeguard your client’s interests.

Is providing a free / fast translation actually serving your client’s bests interests?

Think about how this ties into your own professional code of conduct

9. Risk management strategies: Lawyers are risk managers.

Legal translators are risk managers.

Expert translators exercise judgment and make informed decisions on the appropriateness of certain renderings of translated terms in a legal context, a skill that AI lacks.

They can also spot errors in the source document and point them out saving egg on your face.

10. Considerations for use in legal practice: Work closely with your legal translator.

Let them decide what tool is appropriate for the translation.

It may involve MT / AI.

It may not.

Trust in their expert knowledge.

Words matter in law – even translated words.

 

If you want to learn more, check out some research into this topic:

https://shorturl.at/nCL17

 In mid-November 2023 the Law Society of England and Wales released a short guide on the essentials of Generative AI for lawyers.

Check out our short 10-point summary …

Generative AI in the Legal Sector:

The emergence of generative AI in the legal sector offers new possibilities for increased technology adoption but also introduces various risks.

AI’s Long-term Impact: The long-term impact of generative AI on the legal profession is uncertain, though some law firms are already using and investing in these tools.
Opportunities and Risks: Generative AI may present opportunities for improved service, cost reduction, and meeting new client demands, but also comes with risks such as data and technology risks.
Intellectual Property and Data Risks: Concerns include potential copyright infringement, misuse or disclosure of confidential information, and data protection risks.
Cybersecurity Risks: Vulnerabilities to hacking, data breaches, and corruption of data sources are significant concerns.
Integrity of Outputs and Ethical Concerns: Generative AI could produce misleading or inaccurate outputs, and reflect societal biases present in training data, leading to unfair results.
Reputational Risks: Negative consequences for clients could lead to reputational and brand damage.
Regulatory and Professional Responsibilities: Ensure a comprehensive understanding of, and strict adherence to, regulatory and professional responsibilities, especially in relation to the use of generative AI within your legal practice.
Risk Management Strategies:  Conduct meticulous risk management by rigorously fact-checking all information. Perform due diligence in your practice. Always ensure compliance with all legal and ethical standards.
Considerations for use in Legal Practice: Examine the use of generative AI tools in your legal practice thoroughly, focusing on data management and client communication. Regularly assess the tool’s relevance and the added value it provides, while weighing these benefits against the potential risks involved.

Keep your eyes peeled for a follow-up post on how all this relates to legal translation

For legal translators the links are clear but our next post will spell them out for lawyers and law firms

I’m very happy to be able to share a post about machine translation, its use in professional settings and related questions of  liability, written by Wojciech Woloszyk,  a Polish lawyer linguist. Much obliged to him for drawing my attention to it and for allowing me to share it.

It concerns a recent case before the Polish courts that looked at liability for the improper use of machine translation. While the case did not involve legal translation (it involved translation of a book), it raises interesting points about how translation services are provided.

The original post in English can be accessed here but is also reproduced in full below with Wojciech’s kind permission.

LSP’s responsibility for the process of translation and the rules of using machine translation

THE PRECEDENT-SETTING RULING OF THE POLISH COURT IN A CASE ON THE USE OF MACHINE TRANSLATION IN THE PROCESS OF PROFESSIONAL TRANSLATION AND QUALITY SUPERVISION OVER SUCH PROCESS EXERCISED BY A TRANSLATION COMPANY

The use of ‘free’ applications and services provided by global technology giants, known collectively as GAFAM or BIG TECH, for the purpose of professional activities invariably spark many controversies, disputes, and doubts. On the one hand, we all understand that, in fact, there are no free services or goods. When we are offered any type of ‘free’ and ‘gratuitous’ products, a question should be asked: ‘With what have I paid for this, if not with money? If somebody else has paid, why is that and what will they want from me?’.

It should be noted that these observations concern business entities, as we may encounter real disinterestedness and gratuitousness, for instance, in the case of philanthropy or charity.

If, however, we do not belong to a group of people who are actually in need, but we use services offered by third parties for gainful employment or business activity purposes, we should seriously ask ourselves where the catch is. Because there always is a catch… Unfortunately, for some mysterious reasons, many professionals are still in denial when it comes to the acknowledgement of this simple truth. The same happens to translators using the Google Translate service for the purpose of providing specialised translation service.

Usually, the currency we pay for ‘free-of-charge’ solutions and applications is our privacy and data on our shopping behaviours and preferences. If we accept this deal in our private life, this is basically our own choice. However, if we use such solutions and applications as part of our professional activity, these are data, content, and intellectual property rights owned by our clients and third parties that become the currency. We are not entitled to make such choices on their behalf and this type of conduct should be regarded as falling into the category of ‘unlawful act’ and ‘breach of contract’.

This issue has proved to become one of key aspects examined by the District Court for Poznań-Stare Miasto in Poznań, 12th Economic Division, in Case No. XII GC 669/17. The proceedings led to the delivery, on 13 August 2020, of a precedent-setting ruling (with the statement of reasons available HERE), which – according to my best knowledge supported by research done in commercial legal information databases and the common court case-law database held by the Polish Ministry of Justice – is the first Polish judgment referring to the use of free-of-charge machine translation tools in the context of confidentiality obligation and intellectual property rights, proper organisation of translation process, the liability of a translation company for quality supervision of a translator’s work, as well as lack of grounds to rely on a low price to justify the fact of falling short of quality requirements. The ruling also attempted to define the notion of a ‘professional translator’.

This article will discuss the most important theses included in the statement of reasons. As a preliminary remark, however, it is worth recapitulating the factual circumstances of the case to take a bigger picture.

The proceedings were initiated by a translation company (hereinafter referred to as the ‘TC’ or the ‘claimant’) which brought legal action against its client to seek the payment of remuneration for the translation of a book from Polish into English. The translation service at issue was provided in 2013. The client refused to pay and challenged the quality of the translation of its book, being a specialised handbook on the C programming of microcontrollers, provided by the TC. The translation was also very delayed. In spite of a complaint submitted and several attempts to correct the translation, the quality of the final output, according to the client, was so low (‘tragic’) that the client decided to withdraw from the agreement and ordered the translation from another entity. Against this background, a dispute arose regarding the payment of remuneration to the TC.

It should be noted that the client of the TC had a say in choosing a translator to translate the book as several translation samples prepared by different translators were presented to the client and the client chose the translation that satisfied its expectations to the largest extent. The TC assigned the translation of the book to the author of this version. The translator in question was a student of the 5th year of a Computer Science university programme and a laureate of the national competition in English language for high school students.

During the hearing, the translator stated that he had done 92% of the translation with the use of the Google Translate tool and had corrected this translation afterwards. The remaining 8% were translated with the translator tool without any verification of the output. One of the reasons for using the Google Translate tool was a delay in translating the text.

The TC and the client entered into an agreement on the translation in so-called STANDARD option, which included a reservation that the translation did not need to comply with PN-EN 15038:2006 standard (a predecessor of ISO 17100:2015), but the service would be performed by a professional translator and edited by a native speaker possessing specialised knowledge in the field of the translated text. The translation output was supposed to be fit for professional use.

An expert witness has been called. The expert witness stated that the service had been performed inconsistently with the agreement entered into and that the rules of art had been violated. The translation assessed by the expert witness included numerous linguistic errors, with some parts left untranslated, while the register of the text was far from the register expected in the case of any text intended for publication.

Having heard the case, the District Court for Poznań-Stare Miasto delivered a ruling in which it dismissed the claim and ordered the claimant to pay the cost of proceedings. The section below presents the main findings and arguments presented by the Court in the statement of reasons as well as my commentary.

Principal theses of the ruling:

  • The Court decided that the translation provided by the TC, being the claimant party, was defective to such an extent that it could not be deemed ‘fit for professional use’, contrary to what had been promised by the scope of the ‘standard’ service.
  • The translation was entrusted to a person without relevant qualifications, professional skills and experience.
  • Editing work was incomplete and negligent.
  • Additionally, the Google Translate tool was used, which constitutes a gross violation of the rules of art and contractual provisions, while the fact that the use of the tool was allowed is, at least, a flagrant example illustrating the lack of supervision of the translation process and lack of applying any quality control procedures. The use of the Google Translate tool leads to violating confidentiality obligation and intellectual property rights to the source text owned by the client or third parties.
  • The fact of leaving, in the edited text, some untranslated words, obvious linguistic and spelling errors, as well as the presence of excerpts that are entirely incomprehensible, is equivalent to the occurrence of critical errors that make it impossible to use the translation for professional purposes.
  • ‘Comprehensibility’ of the text is a minimum criterion in the case of ‘budget’ translations offered for informative (indicative) and client’s internal purposes. In the case of translations that are supposed to be used for professional purposes, the very fact that the text is ‘comprehensible’, while at the same time being unreadable, incomplete and abundant in linguistic defects, do not justify considering the translation as performed properly. The translation output in the ‘standard’ option, even after taking into account all reservations made by the TC (the claimant), should be still fit for professional use, and this quality criterion has not been met by the text in question.
  • The TC cannot rely on the contractual limitation of liability for improper performance of the agreement as the high degree of defectiveness makes the translation unfit for its intended purpose, and this, in turn, means that what we face here is not improper performance, but failure to perform the agreement (non-performance of the agreement).
  • The Court also noted that it was the claimant party itself that had quoted the price for the translation. Therefore, the claim that the price for the service justified the lower quality of the translation is groundless. The TC voluntarily agreed to provide a ‘standard’ translation service and set the remuneration itself, and therefore, it should perform the agreement in accordance with its provisions.
  • The Court found that the work provided by the TC, being the claimant party, had undoubtedly included material defects, i.e. defects that prevented its intended use or constituted an express breach of the agreement. The translation provided by the TC was useless for the defendant. This uselessness is further confirmed by the fact that the defendant was forced to re-order the translation from a third party, which did the work from scratch.
  • As a result of establishing that the work provided by the TC included material defects, the TC’s claim for payment was considered unenforceable on the ground that the agreement had not been performed, and therefore, the claim was dismissed.

Contractual limitation of the translation company’s liability for improper performance of a translation service

An extremely interesting aspect of the case was the Court’s examination of whether the contractual limitation of the TC’s liability is effective in the context of the material defectiveness of the work. The Court emphasised that, pursuant to their terms of service, the TC bears no liability for improper performance of the translation service if the client orders the translation for publication or distribution purposes within ‘standard’ and ‘econo’ options. At the same time, the Court held that the limitation of liability covered exclusively the cases of improper performance of the agreement. Given the gravity of the breach of obligations on the part of the claimant in this case, its conduct should be seen not as an improper performance but rather as non-performance of the agreement. The work provided by the claimant included material defects and, therefore, was not delivered by the TC in line with its obligations. The client refused to accept the work from the TC, which it was entitled to do. Therefore, the TC did not perform the agreement improperly but failed to perform the agreement (non‑performance). As a result, the limitation of the TC’s liability provided for in the terms of service would not apply.

Even if we assume that the claimant performed its obligation, but in an improper manner, it should be considered that such limitation of its liability would be unacceptable under Article 473(2) of the Polish Civil Code. The provision states that a stipulation that a debtor will not be liable for damage which the debtor may cause to a creditor intentionally is invalid. The intention, in turn, occurs where a debtor, contrary to an obligation imposed on it, acts or fails to act with the intention to cause damage to a creditor, and therefore it wants such damage to occur or accepts it when it anticipates that it may occur. Having regard to the scale of the breach of obligations on the part of the TC, the professional nature of their activity, the claimant’s knowledge on the subject matter of the agreement and its purpose, as well as the information provided to the client before the agreement was entered into, the Court decided that the TC had anticipated the possibility of causing damage to the client and it had accepted it. The correspondence between the parties clearly showed that the claimant was aware that it was the client’s intention to publish the translated book. The employees of the TC assured the client that the translation in the ‘standard’ option would be of high quality. For these reasons, the limitation of liability provided for in the terms of service was declared invalid by the Court for the purpose of this case.

In my opinion, a conclusion may be drawn from the above that making false declarations, at the stage of quoting, on the professionalism of the persons involved in the translation process and high quality of the translation output in the context of the lack of proper supervision of the translation process by the TC should be regarded as intentionally causing damage to the client.

 

Violation of the rules of the art of translation and the concept of a ‘professional translator’

Even though the profession of a translator (who is not a certified/sworn translator) has not been regulated by Polish law-makers, this does not mean, however, that each person who does a translation in exchange for money may be called a professional translator. The fact that there is no legal definition does not open the way to unrestricted discretion in construing a given concept.

In the case in question, the Court held that the assignment had been entrusted to a person who had not been a professional translator with adequate language qualifications or basic knowledge of using language-related technologies. The fact that a free-of-charge machine translation tool, namely the Google Translate tool, was used was also a proof of insufficient competence and knowledge in the area of the rules of the translation art, illustrated further, among others, by the lack of post-editing skills and ignorance of the terms and conditions of the service. Using a free-of-charge machine translation tool may constitute a ground for asserting the claimant’s infringement of intellectual property rights owned by the defendant.

The method of work applied by the translator was inconsistent with the rules of the translation art as the confidentiality of the transferred data was not ensured and intellectual property rights owned by the client/the author of the source text were infringed. Machine translation with the use of the Google Translate tool does not satisfy the condition of ‘keeping strict confidentiality’ and leads to infringing third parties’ intellectual property rights.

In my opinion, any entity providing professional specialised translation services should be aware of the risks arising from the use of tools that are not intended for professional and commercial purposes. Reading of the terms of service (in this case the Google Terms of Service for Google Translate) specified by the service provider should be considered as the absolute minimum of diligence is this regard. Far-reaching rights enjoyed by the machine translation service provider under the Terms of Service in question should result in the prohibition of using this service for translating any specialised texts protected by copyright owned by the clients.

On the professional translation market, a strong emphasis is placed on a clear indication that translations were done with the use of machine translation tools. For this reason, the two processes are covered by two different quality standards. ISO 17100:2015, which specifies procedural and quality requirements for translation services, explicitly excludes any machine translation with further post-editing from its scope. Translations done within such procedure are considered as not compliant with the quality requirements provided for by this quality standard. Machine translation and post-editing are covered by a separate quality standard – ISO 18587:2017.

The introduction to ISO 18587:2017 states:

‘(…) there is no MT system with an output which can be qualified as equal to the output of human translation and, therefore, the final quality of the translation output still depends on human translators and, for this purpose, their competence in post‑editing.’

 Importantly, the quality standard on machine translation makes a clear distinction between a ‘translator’ and a ‘post-editor’. A person who only verifies the output of the machine translation and introduces corrections is not a translator under the standard. In the case in question, 92% of the translation was the post-edited output of machine translation, while 8% was so-called raw machine translation product.

Post-editing must be agreed with the client in advance.

It should be clearly stated that the use of machine translation is certainly not entirely excluded from a professional translation process. Quite the opposite, it is a common procedure for non-literary texts of the relatively low level of complexity and difficulty, not intended for highly specialised uses, such as domestic appliance users’ guides, product descriptions at online shops’ sites, simple commercial and informative texts, simple contracts, terms and conditions of services, instructions, etc.

In the case of more complex texts, where quality requirements are higher, machine translation is used only in a supportive function as suggestions or reference materials.

It should be emphasised that in the case in question the main issue was not the very fact of using machine translation but using it in a manner that is extremely unprofessional and in breach of any universally accepted rules of the art of translation and industry best practices.

The use of professional machine translation tools is acceptable only upon the express consent of the client and it constitutes a different type of service than the traditional translation service. The machine translation service is governed by a different quality standard than the translation service (for translation service it is ISO 17100:2015, while for machine translation service it is ISO 18587:2017). In the period in which the translation at issue was done, the Google Translate tool was based on the so‑called statistical machine translation, which resulted in outputs of a significantly lower quality than those produced currently by the neural machine translation.

 As for the violation of the rules of the translation art by using the Google Translate tool, it should be explained that this claim arises from the fact that the use of any services offered by Google is equivalent to the acceptance of their Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, which raise justified doubts related to confidentiality and intellectual property rights issues. An analysis of the consequences of using Google services for professional translation purposes is included below.

 

Google Terms of Service

The Google Terms of Service[1], as applicable in the relevant period when the translation to which the judgment in question relates was performed, state as follows: When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing you have added to Google Maps). Some Services may offer you ways to access and remove content that has been provided to that Service. Also, in some of our Services, there are terms or settings that narrow the scope of our use of the content submitted in those Services. Make sure you have the necessary rights to grant us this license for any content that you submit to our Services [own emphasis].

In the context of such terms and conditions: firstly, the translator violated the Google Terms of Service by sending to the Google Translate tool the content it had no right to use for any purpose other than translation. Secondly, by sending the full text of the book to the Google service, the translator granted Google a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute the book of the claimant. It should also be taken into account that Google regulated the matter of using its services in business contexts as well: If you are using our Services on behalf of a business, that business accepts these terms. It will hold harmless and indemnify Google and its affiliates, officers, agents, and employees from any claim, suit or action arising from or related to the use of the Services or violation of these terms , including any liability or expense arising from claims, losses, damages, suits, judgments, litigation costs and attorneys’ fees. Therefore, assuming that the claimant was aware of the manner in which the service was performed, or at least it is fully responsible before the defendant for the tools used by the translator, the claimant accepted the Google Terms of Service and assumed liability for claims arising from the violation of the Google Terms of Service. According to the translator’s statement, the claimant was aware that the text was translated with the use of the Google Translate tool.

Google Privacy Policy

Google Privacy Policy also includes important points related to the use of the Google Translate tool in this case[2]. According to the document: We collect information to provide better services to all of our users – from figuring out basic stuff like which language you speak, to more complex things like which ads you’ll find most useful or the people who matter most to you online. There are two manners of collecting data. The first one is to collect data provided by the user, while the second is to collect information received while Google services are used. Google may collect data on services used by the user and on the manner in which they are used (e.g. when the user visits a site with an ad tool or when the user displays and clicks on ads and materials made available by them). Google collects information, among others, in logs: When you use our services or view content provided by Google, we may automatically collect and store certain information in server logs. Such information may include details on the manner in which the service was used, e.g. searched expressions, phone call log data, IP address, data on the functioning of the device, cookie files, etc. We use the information we collect from all of our services to provide, maintain, protect and improve them, to develop new ones, and to protect Google and our users. We also use this information to offer you tailored content – like giving you more relevant search results and ads.

 According to its Privacy Policy, Google is, therefore, entitled to collect and record in server logs any information collected from the use of Google services by the user, and in particular, it is entitled to automatically save on its servers any phrases searched by the user. When using the Google Translate service, the translator entered into the machine translation tool almost the entire content of the book, thus allowing Google to save it on its servers and to use it for its own purposes.

Finally, I would like to make several observations inspired by the ruling discussed, which may prove interesting from the perspective of daily translation and localization industry practice.

  • The fact of leaving in the edited text some untranslated words, obvious linguistic and spelling errors, as well as the presence of excerpts that are entirely incomprehensible, is equivalent to the occurrence of critical errors that make it impossible to use the translation for professional purposes.
  • In the case in question, the TC claimed that even though certain parts of the text were found to be defective in terms of language style or too literal, and their register was not appropriate for the specialised translation, the text was comprehensible, which should be regarded as enough to satisfy the quality requirement under the ‘standard’ service option provided by the TC. ‘Comprehensibility’ of the text is a minimum criterion in the case of ‘budget’ translations (with low prices and short deadlines) offered for informative (indicative) and client’s internal purposes. In such circumstances, aspects such as style, word order, vocabulary or register may indeed be seen as matters of secondary importance. In the case of translations that are supposed to be used for professional purposes, however, the fact that the text is ‘comprehensible’, while at the same time being unreadable, incomplete and abundant in linguistic defects, do not justify recognising the translation as performed properly.
  • The text intended for professional purposes must encourage the trust of the reader, also on a linguistic level. A literal approach and the use of informal expressions may result in the reader’s questioning substantive aspects of the translation, which excludes its further use or quoting. Errors being typical consequences of improper use of machine translation disqualify the text in the eyes of a professional reader.
  • It is the translation company as a party to the agreement entered into with the client that is responsible for choosing a translator. Any potential selection based on clients’ preferences should be made from the group of people properly verified by the translation company in terms of their translation competence and their ability to ensure an adequate level of translation in a given domain. The translator in this case did not satisfy such standards.
  • As for the involvement of the client in the process of translating book publications, when referring to this issue in general and without any specific reference to the case in question, it may be said that cooperation between the client/the author and the translation company/translator is highly desirable and has a positive influence on the output of the translation process. This condition, however, is not a sine qua non for the service to be provided correctly, but it is rather a good industry practice. When such cooperation is established, it is possible to agree on terminological choices, clarify potential ambiguities of the source text, and obtain reference materials and additional materials that may prove useful in the process of translating the text.
  • Bad quality of the source text has an impact on the quality of the translation. However, due diligence expected of any professional means that a client ordering the translation should be notified that the material provided is not suitable for the purpose of providing the work properly (see Article 634 of the Polish Civil Code). In this legal relationship, it is a translation company that acts as a professional that accepts an order and it should assess the material provided in terms of its suitability for the proper performance of the work. The client usually does not possess knowledge and expertise to adequately assess whether or not the material provided is suitable for translation.
  • The translation company has an obligation to provide the ongoing quality supervision and organisational supervision of the translation process and it is responsible for the selection of tools used by the translator. Similarly, the translation company must ensure quality control before the translation is handed over to the client. The fact that the service ordered did not include verification, but only editing by a native speaker, does not justify the translation falling short of basic quality standards respected in the translation industry.

The ruling described above is subject to appeal. An appeal has been filed indeed and the case will be heard by the second-instance court – the Regional Court in Poznań. I will continue to follow the case closely to share with you information on the final decision in this extremely interesting case.

[1] Google Terms of Service applicable between 1 March 2012 and 11 November 2013, available at: https://policies.google.com/terms/archive/20120301?hl=en&gl=en

[2] Google Privacy Policy applicable between 24 June 2013 and 20 December 2013 available at: https://policies.google.com/terms/archive/20120301?hl=en&gl=en

 

I think this deserves to be shared far and wide. Please give Wojciech a follow on Linkedin to get updates on the case.

 

One of next week’s highlights plans to be the 2-day conference hosted by the International Association of Legislation and the Greek Secretariat for Legal and Parliamentary Affairs (11-12 February 2021). To my mind, it’s relevant to all of us who translate legal documents.

Given the COVID-19 restrictions, the event will be online.

It’s completely in English, so open to a broad international audience. While the focus may be on the Greek model, the aim is to explore how that model could be used by other countries.

It’s free to attend and the zoom link will be available in a couple of days. I’ll update the blogpost when the link becomes available.

Key themes that will be explored at the conference which I think are particularly relevant for those of us who translate legal documents are:

  • better law-making processes and better legislative drafting, which are/should be topics of interest to legal translators who have to regularly translate legislation;
  • how transposition of EU legislation into national legal orders can be improved. Again that’s a topic relevant to legal translators because it can add another layer of complication to the already complicated task of translating legislation;
  • how civil law systems like Greece can learn from common law systems (and vice versa), because we have to bridge those divides all day every day as translators of legal texts; and
  • how important it is for citizens/businesses to have access to the law in language they understand (and by extension how important it is for foreigners interacting with legal systems to have access to translated law), which is part of our core mission as legal translators.

Promises to be an interesting couple of days.

You can access the full programme here.

The call for proposals for “Jurilinguistics III: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Language and Law” has been extended to 18 March.

If you work in the fields of legal translation/interpreting, and have something interesting to say about them, the training of legal translators, or terminology resources in those fields, do consider submitting a paper. The last two editions in Seville were great. The third edition will be in Cambridge later this year (1-2 October 2020). Jurtrans will be there, and hopefully I’ll be presenting a paper.

Ius et Translatum: English-Greek / Greek-English Legal Glossary – A review

Marta Chromá has written that “legal translation implies both a comparative study of different legal systems and an awareness of the problems created by the absence of equivalent concepts, legal institutions, terms and other linguistic units. As pointed out by Kischel … ‘the question in legal translation is not which translation is right, but more modestly, which one is less wrong’”[1].Continue Reading..

Launching a new series of interviews with legal translators and experts in the field of legal translation, we have an interview with Eleni Nanaki, Attorney at Law LL.M – author and publisher of the bilingual legal glossaries in the ius et translatum series who talks to us about challenges in legal translation as seen by an international lawyer…Continue Reading..

A couple of interesting talks on legal translation and court interpreting are coming up in the next few days and weeks…Continue Reading..

The challenges and pitfalls of legal translation: an interview with John O’Shea

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John is an experienced legal translator with a background in law. We asked him how he ventured into translation, how he deals with the specific challenges of his specialisation and what are some of the best ways to specialise in this field.

Tell us a bit about yourself. How and where did you first learn Greek and how did you decide to venture into legal translation?

Hi, I’m originally from Ireland. I lived in Greece for 15 years and now live in London. I’m a legal translator and have been doing this job for 21 years now. I was also recently elected to the Board of FIT Europe.

I started learning Greek when I was at university, doing some research about environmental law; the idea was to compare the legal systems in two peripheries of the European Union. From early on I had an interest in comparative law, which is an essential tool for any legal translator. I used to teach law too; and law –as you know- is all about language anyway. So it was easy for me to combine my knowledge of law with my interest in language.  The perfect combination for a legal translator.

What are the main challenges and “traps” when translating legal texts, especially between two different legal systems?

I studied law in Northern Ireland which has its own legal system within the UK, but of course it is based on the common law. The Greek legal system comes from a completely different tradition, based on Roman and civil law, so it can be very hard to describe the way things are done in the Greek context through the medium of English. Lots of things don’t match up, there are often no simple equivalents for terms, ideas or concepts. Plus with Greek you have a couple of added layers of difficulty and complexity: firstly, the switch from purist Greek to the demotic form; the purist form is still very evident in legal documents even today, and secondly the Greek in Cyprus, especially in a legal setting, is completely different from that in Greece: different terms, different concepts, different ways of seeing the world, different ways of presenting information. So translating from Greek to English can be a real challenge.

You need to have a very strong grasp of the two legal systems you are translating between; and a decent understanding of comparative law. Sometimes concepts may appear to be the same at a superficial level but when you take a comparative law approach, and peel back the layers you realise that what you thought was an easy equivalent, isn’t in fact equivalent at all because the concept in each legal system has a slightly different focus. I remember a paper given at a legal translation conference in early 2017 which talked about negligence in 3 different legal systems; but in each system the losses which were being compensated were radically different. Can we really say that negligence in system A is the same as in system B when it is rectifying a different sort of wrong? As a legal translator you really need to be attuned to that sort of detail which means that in-depth research needs to be a core part of what you do.

How do you approach legal terms that have no precise equivalent in the target language?

Let’s take the example of antiparochi; it became common in Greece in the 50s, 60s and 70s as the country experienced a building boom as people flooded into the cities and anyone with land found it tempting to hand the land over to a contractor who would build an apartment building and give the landowner a couple of flats in return. There isn’t anything like it in the UK that I am aware of. If you check the legal dictionaries they will give various terms that don’t really reflect what the term is really about. That tends to be a major problem with legal dictionaries; often they provide no context for when the suggested terms should be used, and offer no clues as to how to decide between the choices available.

That’s where some knowledge of translation theory can be very useful. It suggests that there are various tools and techniques available to the translator; you can’t just rely on a dictionary. These include the use of calques, loan words or neologisms, even translator’s notes to provide an explanation about what the term means. Which approach you use will often depend on who your client is. If you know the document is intended to be read by lawyers and filed in court you need to be as precise as possible; if the client is someone buying an apartment then you can a bit more lax because their primary concern is to understand what they are agreeing to. So how you translate a term, especially one for which there is no easy equivalent, will vary depending on context. You hear a lot of suggestions about what antiparochi should be in English, but my personal favourite is land-for-flats system.  Simple, easy-to-understand, and to the point.

Sometimes concepts may appear to be the same at a superficial level but when you take a comparative law approach and peel back the layers you realise that what you thought was an easy equivalent, isn’t in fact equivalent at all because the concept in each legal system has a slightly different focus.

What would you advise colleagues who wish to specialise in legal translation? How should they go about it?

There’s a massive debate in the legal translation literature about whether someone who has studied law or someone who has studied translation makes the best legal translator. I can’t answer that definitively but from my experience someone without a background in law is at more of a disadvantage because they need to learn the law of two countries, of two legal systems. Someone with a background in law already has a foot on the ladder, and simply needs to become an expert in the other system.

Legal training equips your mind with certain tools that make it much easier to figure out things in the second legal system. I’m not saying it is impossible for someone without legal training to become a legal translator, it just requires a lot more hard work, study and effort; plus the risks of errors being made is definitely higher. That’s not to say that you will never make errors if you’ve studied law then come to translation. To err is human after all.

If you come to legal translation from a translation background, areas you really need to focus on are comparative law, to be able to distinguish between different conceptualisations of the world by different legal systems; procedural law in both systems (how the courts work, how legal proceedings are filed, and so on); the substantive areas of law you are interested in working in -say contract law or land law-; and, strange as it may sound, legal philosophy. A legal translator needs to be able to understand how a lawyer reasons, how he or she thinks, how he or she conceptualises things, put arguments, uses hypothetical reasoning and so on. A firm grounding in legal philosophy can help with that. And of course, legal philosophy in the common law and civil law is very different, so you need to read up on both.

You asked me how to go about specialising in legal translation.

If you come from a translation background, get a law degree ideally. In Greece there are no degree courses in legal translation, you’d have to go abroad to do that. The University of London will be offering one from autumn this year. Other European countries offer great degree courses in legal translation for their own languages.  University of Trieste has great expertise in the field for Italian, for example.

If doing another degree is prohibitive, read as widely as possible about the two legal systems you are interested in.

If you come from a legal background, either study translation or read widely about translation theory before diving straight into translation, and of course make sure your language skills in both languages are strong.

Continuous professional development is also vital. You can’t possibly know all areas of law but you can acquire expertise in certain areas, just like lawyers do. So regularly attending conferences on law and on legal translation is important; especially conferences on law because the law is always developing and changing and it pays to keep up to date.

What are some good resources in the Greek to English / English to Greek language combination?

This is one of the major problems with languages of limited diffusion. A major lack of resources targeted at translators. Basically there are few resources in the field. There are some books in Greek, like Prof. Krimpas’ excellent book on legal terminology, but they can be counted on one hand. A couple of the Greek legal codes have been translated into English; the quality varies a lot from below average to ok; plus lots of the key texts have never been properly translated. What you tend to end up with is everyone translating laws / codes differently, whereas with major languages like French and German, official translations of key legislation and codes are easily available.

But the major problem is a lack of decent dictionaries. I’ve already said that dictionaries won’t solve all the problems or answer all the questions but they are good starting point. The problem with GR-EN / EN-GR is that there is paucity of good legal dictionaries. There are in fact quite a few legal dictionaries in that combination, they just tend to be problematic: mere word lists in effect, or a massive choice of potential things to choose from, but no explanation of how to differentiate between them.  In other languages like French, academics or even individual translators have prepared legal dictionaries designed to overcome those problems. In Greece, we haven’t quite got to that stage.

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