Law Technology Today From the ABA Legal Technology Resource Center
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Do you need to translate legal documents or provide linguistic interpretation services? If so, you’ll be aware that the legal translation profession demands strict accuracy as well as efficiency in these tasks. How can you get the job done in a way that ensures linguistic fidelity while at the same time turning around assignments in record time?
What Is Legal Translation?
Legal translation is a specialist service that meets a wide range of needs. From individual immigration cases to complex contracts and agreements between international companies and even governments, legal translation takes many forms. In essence, it is the translation of legal documents from one language to another. In practice, this could mean legal documents online, hard copy files, court papers, and even videos.
It’s easy to see why legal translation services are important. They can have a huge impact on economic and personal impact. As such, it is the responsibility of a language translator to deliver accurate, timely translations each and every time. If you deliver or use legal translation services, read on to discover five top trends in legal translation tech. Each of these can lead to enhanced efficiency within the legal translation process.
Tech Talk: What Is Important for a Legal Translation?
A legal translation needs to be accurate and delivered on time. Confidentiality is also key—hence us only including trusted, market-leading products in this round-up of five on-trend legal translation tech tools.
memoQ
One of the industry’s leading computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools, memoQ streamlines the translation process. Through translation memory, terminology management and automatic quality assurance tools, it not only speeds up the translation process but enhances quality at the same time. Its consistent approach to language translation and domain-specific terminology means that language professionals can undertake legal document translation with confidence.
SDL Trados
Another CAT tool that warrants a mention in respect of both legal and certified translation services is SDL Trados. Translators can work up to twice their usual speed while also avoiding ambiguities, inconsistencies, and other errors. For those who are keen to avoid finding out what happens when wrong translation becomes a legal problem, this software could be the answer. SDL Trados’ close control over access rights is particularly reassuring for those working on legal documents.
ABBYY FineReader
Not all legal translations begin with an electronic document. Those who translate website legal pages may have the luxury of a neat, orderly batch of files, but other forms of legal translation often involve hand-written papers. That’s where ABBYY FineReader comes in. It’s one of the most impressive optical character recognition applications on the market. The software takes an image of the document and turns it into an editable file in a range of commonly used formats.
Dragon NaturallySpeaking
There are times when legal translation services call for transcription work. In these instances, Dragon NaturallySpeaking comes into its own. Dragon has long been the go-to brand for speech recognition technology. When it comes to legal transcription and translation work, this software can help to speed up the process without compromising quality.
Linguee
A solid, multilingual dictionary can provide a great degree of reassurance towards the end of a long day of translating. Linguee takes the idea of a dictionary to the next level. Not only does it enable you to search 1,000,000,000 translations to check both words and expressions, but it also allows you to check for context and even for images. The ability to see how others have translated a particular phrase is also at your fingertips with this handy resource.
How Much Does It Cost to Have a Legal Foreign Document Translation?
Pricing is often a deciding factor when it comes to the award of legal translation work. Few individuals or companies have money to waste, so their goal is to buy fast, efficient translation services that don’t cost the earth.
Using the above translation tech provides individuals with the chance to put themselves forward as the best translator for the job at an acceptable price. Whether the client needs to translate a website to English or translate documents written by hand to Russian, using these tools can deliver a faster and therefore more cost-effective service.
The language pairing in question will influence the price of a legal translation as well. If you undertake legal translation, English to Spanish (for example) will be a fairly low-cost language pairing (the same applies if you need to translate Spanish to English). Try to find someone to translate a site or a batch of legal papers from Manx to Arapaho, however, and costs will spiral rapidly.
Final Thoughts
The five top tech tools listed above serve to speed up and enhance the quality of legal translation services. They can thus be used as part of an integrated strategy for improving your legal translation capabilities in a practical way.
