Court Translation in Cross-Border Disputes

Standard legal translation is challenging. Cross-border arbitration translation is more so, because the document moves between two legal systems that may use the same word for different concepts.

The fundamental challenge

"Damages" in English common law is not always equivalent to "damages" in continental civil law. "Witness statement" in UK arbitration carries different formal expectations than "déclaration de témoin" in French proceedings. A translator who renders these as direct equivalents has subtly altered the legal meaning.

What we do differently for arbitration

• Translators with documented training in both source and destination legal systems
• Glossary alignment with the legal team handling the case (not just our internal terminology)
• Annotations on terms that have non-equivalent meanings, with the original term retained where appropriate
• Strict back-translation of key documents for verification

Most of our arbitration work is multi-month. We assign a single translator-reviser pair for the duration to maintain consistency across thousands of pages.