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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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