Contract Translation

Rosetta Translation specialises in legal translation, and has extensive experience in translating contracts. This expertise means that the translator assigned to translating your contract will have the legal knowledge necessary to translate into the target language in such a way as to use only the most appropriate legal terminology.

We also provide comprehensive and flexible outsourcing solutions for our clients’ business needs, and delivers consistently excellent services to our rapidly expanding clientele. Our blend of experienced, skilled language professionals, industry experts, and project managers increasingly makes Rosetta the partner of choice for even the most complex and specialist translation needs.

Attention to Detail in Contract Translation

Attention to even the smallest detail is essential when translating contracts. Rosetta Translation is very aware of this fact, and it is for this reason that many of our long-term clients, with whom we have built up extensive relationships, turn to us every time they need a contract translated.

For a free instant quote, please contact us at any of our local offices in London, Shanghai, New York, Luxembourg or Paris.

Recent Clients for Contract Translation

Appropriate Use of Terminology

Your source language may make a differentiation that is not habitually made in your target language. The translator assigned to your project, who will be either a member of the legal profession or the holder of a qualification in legal translation, will be able to work around this, and provide you with a translated contract which takes into account all the particular nuances of both the source and target languages.

In this way, you can be confident that every sentence of your translated contract will have been analysed in-depth before the translator settles on wording that has all the necessary legal connotations in the target text as it did in the original source document.

Swift Delivery of High-quality Contract Translations

Rosetta Translation is a translation agency that fully understands the need to keep to tight deadlines.

We are only too aware of the fact that, at times, it can be vital to the growth of your business to have a contract translated at short notice. Therefore, on receipt of your quote, we will get back to you as soon as possible, and give you an exact time for the completion of the translation of your contract.

You can then be certain that your contract will be returned to you by its guaranteed deadline.

Confidentiality

Client confidentiality is paramount at Rosetta Translation.

We fully understand the need to maintain strict confidentiality in contract translation, and are happy to sign non-disclosure agreements if necessary.

Confidentiality is a company policy, and you can therefore rest assured that this process will not slow down the translation of your contract.

What is the difference between a legal translation of a contract and a legal contract in the other language (target language)?

This is a question that we get asked a lot by our clients, and we can understand the confusion. After all, we advertise proudly that we use specialist legal contract translators, so why should the client not be able to use our legal translation as an actual legally valid contract?

There are in fact a number of interrelated reasons why, all related to differences in law, as will hopefully become clear from the few examples of issues below. These issues include:

Specific explicit references to legal code

Many contracts refer specifically to the law or laws on which a given right or obligation is based. Thus, a German employment contract may make a specific reference to an article of German labour law. If you translate that contract into English, it will still make reference to German labour law, which obviously cannot be right for a contract under English law, so the problem becomes very apparent.

Implicit references to legal code

A translator is only supposed to translate, but what if you as the client just remove that specific reference to an article of law? Well, in that case, the issue is merely hidden, but has not gone away. You can claim in your contract that an employee has the right to a certain type of compensation in case of unfair dismissal, but how do you know that this works the same way under, say, English law?

Different jurisdiction

Many contracts make specific references to their jurisdiction, i.e. the authority under which the agreement is meant to be ruled. In our German employment contract translation example above, this is likely to be shown in various references to German law and a German employment contract, but also in the form of saying specifically that the jurisdiction is to be Germany. For the agreement to work in England, one would have to change that to something like “courts of England shall have exclusive jurisdiction to settle any dispute which may arise out of or in connection with this Agreement”. You can probably sense how far we have now moved from the realm of translation into the realm of law.

Different legal concepts

Every country has its own, more or less organically grown, legal system, and while there are a lot of commonalities, in law, nuances matter, and essentially the same word can have vastly different scope in different languages. A simple but also fascinating example is the word ‘crime’, which in French is reserved for a particular serious offence under criminal law. In English, the term covers a far wider spectrum of misdeeds. It’s easy to see how even in the most rigorous translation can quickly convey subtly different meanings in the context of the target language and its legal and cultural superstructure.