The legal translator as a practitioner
Seeing yourself as a practitioner is a powerful idea for legal translators. I first came across this idea in this blog post by Lloyd...
Resources for translating contracts (3): Essential Contract Drafting Skills
Here’s another useful resource for translating contracts: Essential Contract Drafting Skills — a Practical Guide by Tiffany Kemp It’s a short book (doesn’t have...
The term research process, it’s about the process; not the type of dictionary
What do you do when you come across a term you don’t know the translation for in a document you’re translating? In my case,...
Resources for translating contracts (2): the mother-of-all contract drafting books: MSCD
“Mother-of-all” might be an overstatement, as I’m sure there are other thick books out there on how to draft contracts in English, but this...
Things I learnt from a journo about translating culture-specific terms: (3) Good translations from collective bouncing-off
This is the third on a series of posts on what I took away from the final talk at the METM14 conference (part 1...
Some requirements for translating legal documents
Based on my surely not-that-accurate restaurant-menu analogy post of the other day, which at least highlights some of the main characteristics of legal translation,...
Legal and menu translation
Legal translation is a lot like translating restaurant menus. Firstly, both types of translation are full of culture-specific or non-equivalent terms, i.e., terms that...
Don’t say it’s a good translation. If you can’t use it, it’s crap!
It’s amazing the insight you get when you speak to users of translations. The other day I was speaking to a friend of mine...
Quick tip for translating contracts (1): name the parties more often in English (and a point on ambiguity)
As noted in this resource I mentioned here the other day, Spanish contracts tend to use pronouns where English usually just repeats the party...
New page with blog links
I just added this links page with blogs on legal translation and the law. More will be added as I remember them. 🙂
Resources for translating contracts (1): La traducción de los contratos
Here’s an excellent resource (in Spanish) on translating contracts from Spanish to English and vice versa: La traducción de los contratos (inglés – castellano...
The rule of law / estado de derecho can of worms
Estado de derecho is often translated as “rule of law”, but the terms are not exact equivalents, as O’Donnell states in this paper that...
Things I learnt from a journo about translating culture-specific terms: (2) Own criteria and audience come first
This is the second part to this post on what I took away from the final talk at the METM14 conference. Another aspect of...
How to translate “reserva de ley” into English (using a descriptive strategy)
Reserva de ley is the principle under which the Spanish Constitution specifies that certain areas of the law may only be regulated by primary...
Things I learnt from a journo about translating culture-specific terms: (1) Description trumps linguistic solutions
The final talk at the METM14 conference held recently in Madrid was an interesting and entertaining one by journalist Martin Roberts. Martin had a...
Why proofreaders are important and when to get angry with your translator
Don’t get upset when your translator sends you a translation containing simple writing errors — it could actually be a good sign! What you’re...
Posts also in Spanish
In case anyone’s interested, I’ve also started publishing posts in Spanish. The focus is slightly different, although I may translate them to English and...
Example of a safe-bet translation
Someone recently emailed me asking for an example of a safe-bet translation, which I wrote about in this post. Safe bets are basically sitting-on-the-fence...
What’s in a name? Spain’s great faith in public servants
Like most civil services, Spain’s bureaucracy wants to bring order to the world and everything in it. But while in other places they seek...
La casta política and where it came from
Here’s an interesting term that’s become popular in Spain: la casta as in la casta política. Literally, it’s the “political caste”, or the old...
Aforamiento: making us unequal before the law and wreaking havoc in bilingual dictionaries
When the King of Spain Juan Carlos de Borbón decided to call it a day and abdicate, he put everyone into a frenzy, the...
Not that effective changes to Spain’s eviction law
As an occasional topic on this blog has been the wave of evictions of mortgage defaulters in Spain brought on by the financial crisis...
Safe-bet errors: a translation’s worst enemy
An easy way to wreck an otherwise good translation is to include the safe-bet translation of a term or two in it. What’s a...
You gotta do what you gotta do: Classic polispeak from Spain
Here’s a fantastic bit of polispeak from a PP (Partido Popular) party rally in Spain. It’s from a couple of years back, but it’s...
A cognitive slip and something about the translation relationship
The following exchange on Twitter got me thinking about the difference between important and difficult translations and how I might have confused the two...
