Legal translator Kaya Matsumoto gave a deeply informative talk to members of the JLD in early April. With extensive experience in translation from around the globe, Ms. Matsumoto recently struck out on her own as a freelance translator. During her talk, she described the workflow of an in-house legal translator and followed up with a wealth of examples about how to tackle various translation conundrums.
When translating for a legal office, Ms. Matsumoto explained the rigorous review process translations undergo. Not only does the first draft get checked by another translator, but lawyers might conduct one or two additional checks. I can imagine how this may seem excessive. Years ago, I attended a Japanese/English translation conference for in-house translators and distinctly recall a fellow attendee being astounded when I mentioned that my supervisor reviewed most of my translation work. (I work in-house in the automotive industry.) In retrospect—and after many more years of working as a translator, a lot of formal and continuing education training, and exposure to the idea of ISO standards for translation—I think both peer review and review by a subject matter expert can be a crucial part of the translation process. Legal translation is absolutely one type of translation that benefits from such rigorous review because an error in translation could be life-altering for the client.
About half of the webinar covered nuts-and-bolts issues when translating legal documents, and Ms. Matsumoto covered both directions. Because I work in-house and any manner of documents may cross my desk, I have received a few contract-style assignments. Thankfully, no one needed me to translate something that preserved legal effect, just to understand what all the words on the page meant. Still, I often found myself poring over legalese, including doublets such as “terms and conditions,” Latin expressions like “inter alia,” and dusty old prepositions like “heretofore.”
Ms. Matsumoto had prepared many examples in a mock contract along with specific presentation slides to examine the language on a granular level. With the list of links she provided with her talk, I will have a host of new references to use the next time I have to translate a contract or written agreement. These resources will surely help me make even better, more natural (well, for legalese, anyway) sounding translations.
Ms. Matsumoto built her talk around questions she received from participants in advance of the webinar. Based on the topics she presented, I realized that many of the sentence structures I have struggled with (think: “The seller agrees to provide A and B or C”) also pose a challenge for my colleagues. Ms. Matsumoto also addressed common terminology concerns that have dogged me for years, such as when does a Japanese phrase include or exclude the referent (think 100以下 versus 100未満). Overall, I thought this was an amazingly informative webinar that clearly described what to expect as a legal translator. Ms. Matsumoto’s examples were numerous and made it easy to understand many of the linguistic challenges legal translators face.
Author: audra lincoln
Editor: Jeff Sanfacon
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