Contract translation
A contract only works if every party reads the same obligations. We translate commercial agreements with legal-specialist linguists, so the translated version binds the way the original does.
Why contracts break machine translation
In everyday English, “responsibility” and “liability” are near-synonyms. In a contract, they are not. Liability is the enforceable obligation to compensate — the word that determines who pays when something goes wrong. A machine translation engine trained on general text will swap one for the other without hesitation, because in most of its training data the swap is harmless.
Contracts are full of these traps. “Shall” creates an obligation; “may” creates a permission; “will” is often just a prediction. “Termination” ends a contract going forward; “rescission” unwinds it as if it never existed. And across legal systems the traps multiply: a single word in Portuguese or German may cover two concepts that English law keeps strictly apart.
The result is a specific failure mode: a translated contract that reads perfectly and means something different. Nobody catches it at signing. Someone catches it in a dispute.
Translated by people who work in law
Contract translation at Link Translation runs through our legal practice group: native-language linguists with legal training, matched to your area of law — commercial, employment, IP licensing, distribution. They translate the concept, not just the word, and they flag the places where the target legal system has no exact equivalent instead of papering over them.
Every file then goes to a second legal linguist for an independent review. Two qualified readers, working against your term base, before anything comes back to you.
What we translate
- Commercial and sales agreements — including framework and master service agreements
- Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) — both for signature and for review of counterparty drafts
- Supply, distribution and agency agreements
- Licensing and IP agreements
- Employment contracts and policies referenced in them
- Shareholder agreements and transaction documents
Confidentiality and process
Contracts are among the most sensitive documents a company sends outside its walls. Every linguist on your project works under a signed NDA, access is limited to the assigned team, and we will sign your own confidentiality terms before receiving files.
The process is the same one we run for all regulated content: a fixed quote within 24 hours, terminology alignment on your defined terms, translation by a legal specialist, independent second review, and QA on numbers, dates, party names and cross-references — the details that cause real damage when they slip.
Where a receiving court or authority has formal requirements for translated documents, requirements differ by country. Tell us where the translation is going and we will prepare it in the form that destination accepts.
Machine translation has a place in legal work — we use it for high-volume document triage in litigation. For a contract someone will sign, a human specialist translates from the first word, and a second one signs off.
Frequently asked questions
Can machine translation handle contracts?
Not for anything a party will sign or rely on. Machine translation produces fluent text, but it swaps near-synonyms that are legally distinct — responsibility for liability, termination for rescission. The output reads fine and means something else, which is the most dangerous kind of error in a contract.
How do you keep defined terms consistent?
Before translation starts, the defined terms in your definitions clause go into a term base — the approved list of translations for your key terms. Every occurrence of "Confidential Information" or "Force Majeure Event" is then rendered identically across the whole agreement and its schedules.
How do you protect confidential agreements?
Every linguist works under a signed non-disclosure agreement, and access is restricted to the small team assigned to your project. We have handled sensitive corporate documents for global clients since 2005, and we can sign your own NDA before you send us anything.
What happens when the contract is amended?
You only pay for what changed. Your previous translations are stored in a translation memory, so an amendment that touches two clauses is quoted as a two-clause job — with the surrounding text checked so the amendment reads consistently with the rest.