When the legal industry requires multilingual support, language services provide the solution. Language services support the legal industry in many ways and can play an important role in cross-border litigations, arbitrations, or investigations. The client’s needs often determine which service is the most appropriate, with some language services being more useful than others depending on the situation.

Quality is a top priority in the legal industry and human translation is undoubtedly the option that guarantees the highest-quality output. A single mistranslation in a legal document can have serious consequences, such as legal disputes, penalties, or loss of reputation. Because of this, it is extremely important for legal clients to partner with Language Service Providers (LSPs) who are experienced and uphold the highest quality standards. LSPs often demonstrate their capabilities by gaining accreditations such as ISO 9001, ISO 17100, and ISO 27001.

When it comes to legal translation, there are several options for clients to choose from depending on their needs: human translation, machine translation (raw-output only), or machine translation with human post-editing. Human translation, when provided by a reputable LSP, will be done by a qualified and experienced legal linguist who will ensure the content is translated and proofread to the highest industry standard. At Language Insight we also include a Quality Assurance (QA) review before the content is returned.

Whilst human translation is often the most appropriate in the legal sector, there are instances where other options are needed such as shorter timeframes, limited budgets, or to deal with mass data that needs to be reviewed for a case. In these instances, machine translation is an option as it allows for high volumes of content to be translated within a few minutes. Whilst the raw output from machine translation would only be appropriate to use in certain circumstances, post-editing the raw-output combines machine translation with human translation to produce a higher level of quality that allows the content to be presented with confidence.

With the different levels of translation services that are available, it is important that projects are reviewed on a case-by-case basis to see which type of translation would be the most effective for the client. At Language Insight we are happy to advise our clients on which service would bring them the best results, whether that be human translation or machine translation.

We know that one size doesn’t fit all and we are determined to provide the best results on every project. If you would like to know more about our legal translation services then please visit our website or get in touch with our Sales Team today.