Legal document translation

One legal team, many document types

“Legal translation” covers more than contracts. A company operating across borders generates a steady stream of documents where legal wording carries weight: incorporation papers for a new subsidiary, a code of conduct that must be enforceable in every office, a privacy policy that has to say the same thing in eight languages, a filing due at a foreign regulator.

Each of these has its own conventions. A power of attorney follows rigid formulas that a target-country notary expects to see. A compliance policy has to survive an employment dispute. Terms of service are read by consumers but tested by courts. Our legal practice group — native-language linguists with legal backgrounds — matches the translator to the document type, and an independent second linguist reviews every file.

What we translate

• Corporate and governance documents — articles of association, bylaws, board minutes, shareholder resolutions, powers of attorney
• Compliance policies — codes of conduct, anti-bribery and anti-corruption policies, whistleblowing procedures, sanctions policies
• Regulatory filings and correspondence — submissions, responses to authorities, foreign statutes and expert reports needed to prepare them
• Public-facing legal text — terms of service, privacy policies, cookie notices, EULAs
• Certificates and official records — where a receiving authority has formal requirements, we prepare the translation in the form that country accepts

Accuracy that survives scrutiny

Legal documents are read twice: once by the person who requested them, and again — years later, word by word — by someone looking for a weakness. That second reading is the one we translate for.

Three habits make the difference. First, terminology control: party names, entity types, defined terms and statutory references go into a term base before translation starts, so they are rendered identically across every document in the set. Second, an independent review by a second legal linguist on every file — not a spot check, a full pass. Third, QA on the details that carry legal weight but escape casual reading: dates, amounts, clause numbering, cross-references.

Where a document cites a law or an institution that has no equivalent in the target country, we say so, translating the concept and keeping the original reference — rather than inventing a false equivalent that reads smoothly and misleads.

Where machines fit — and where they stop

We use translation memory on every legal account, so recurring documents — the annual policy update, the standard power of attorney — are quoted on what actually changed, not re-translated from scratch. For large internal document sets where speed matters more than polish, machine translation with human post-editing can be the right call, and we will say so in the quote.

But for anything filed, signed, published or enforceable, humans translate from the start and a second specialist signs off. A legal document is a promise in writing; a statistically plausible guess is not a promise.