Translation agency Scriba translation services

Legal translation

The translation of legal texts is probably one of the most difficult types of translation. A reason might be that the preparation of the original text can be a difficult undertaking. A legal text must be unambiguous and cannot hold any hidden terms that could be used for false benefit or wrongful aims. The following provides a short overview of some of the translation aspects of legal texts.

Legal translation mostly concerns the translation of legal acts, i.e.:

• laws,
• regulations,
• official decisions by the government,
• other legal documents.

Legal writing uses a lot of nominative style meaning that the text has a lot of nouns, gerundial verbs and so-called empty verbs. At the same time, it is certainly possible to make such official texts more comprehensible like the examples of Sweden and English-speaking countries have demonstrated.

• In Sweden, law drafters have been working with language specialists for several decades, improving their formulation skills and learning how to detect errors.
• In the second half of the 20th century, there emerged the Plain English Campaign, which was aimed at the use of an official language understandable to anyone.