Square brackets in certified translations: the translator's voice, and how to format it in one pass

Not everything on the page of an official document is text. There are seals, stamps, signatures, barcodes, letterheads, coats of arms, handwritten notes, and the occasional line that is half cut off by the scanner. A translation still has to account for all of it, and the standard way to do that is to describe each element in square brackets: [Signature], [Barcode], [QR Code], [Inked stamp: …], [illegible].

Two kinds of parentheticals

Official documents are full of round parentheses. The source author puts them there, so they get translated like everything else. Square brackets are different: they signal that the text inside is the translator's, not the author's.

A reviewer, a credential evaluator, or an immigration officer should be able to tell at a glance what the document says and what the translator adds to the document. Brackets make that distinction visible. They are used for:

• Non-text elements (seals, stamps, signatures, logos, barcodes, QR codes)
• Text that can't be read or is partly missing ([illegible], [partially cut off])
• Handwritten additions, and descriptions of the paper or layout when relevant
• The occasional clarification, such as the original term next to a translated entity name

Conventions vary somewhat between agencies, clients and authorities, so always check what the recipient expects.

Making them stand out

Some translators go one step further and set all bracketed notes in a different font or size, for instance a smaller italic sans-serif. In a one-page certificate with a dozen notes, formatting each by hand is tedious and error-prone. Word can do it in a single pass with a wildcard search.

How to do it

1. Open Find and Replace (Windows: Home > Replace; Mac: Edit > Find > Advanced Find and Replace), click More >>, and tick Use wildcards.
2. In Find what, enter \[*\]
3. In Replace with, enter ^&, which puts back whatever was matched. With the cursor still in that box, click Format > Font and choose the font, size or style you want.
4. Click Replace All.

Find and Replace with wildcards enabled: search for \[*\] and replace with ^&, applying a new font to every bracketed note.

A few notes:

• The backslashes are needed because [ and ] are special characters in wildcard mode.
• When you're done, put the cursor in the Replace box and click No Formatting. Otherwise the font setting carries over to your next search and replace.
• The pattern matches anything between square brackets, so it also catches the long descriptive line at the top of a document. A bracket that runs across a paragraph break won't match.
• Text boxes, headers and footers may need a separate pass, as in the spell check blind spot I wrote about recently.

Ius soli: a quick tour of citizenship by birth in Europe and the Americas

Sometimes it’s useful to step back from national debates and look at the map. Ius soli (citizenship by place of birth) is often presented as either a “U.S. peculiarity” or a simple, automatic rule. In practice, it’s neither. The recent overview by Sky TG24 (“Ius soli, come funziona il diritto di cittadinanza nel mondo? Dagli Usa all'Europa”) on how citizenship by birth works in different countries offers a good starting point, and it’s worth expanding that picture a little for a European audience.

The core examples: US, Canada and the main EU countries

In the United States, birthright citizenship still follows the classic constitutional model: with limited exceptions (for example, children of foreign diplomats), anyone born on U.S. territory acquires citizenship at birth. Canada applies ius soli in a similarly broad way, with automatic citizenship for those born in the country and the usual diplomatic exceptions.

The situation changes once we cross the Atlantic.

• Italy relies primarily on ius sanguinis: being born in Italy to foreign parents does not make you Italian at birth. The standard route is an application at 18, subject to continuous, lawful residence since birth.
• The United Kingdom grants citizenship at birth to children born in the country only if at least one parent is a British citizen or holds permanent residence. Others may acquire citizenship later (for example, after 10 years’ continuous residence).
• Germany introduced a limited form of ius soli in 2000. A child born there to foreign parents can become German at birth if at least one parent has lived in Germany legally for a set number of years and holds a permanent residence permit.
• France applies a conditional ius soli system: in many cases, citizenship is acquired automatically at 18 for those who reside in France and have lived there for a minimum period, with earlier options at 13 or 16 under specific residence and schooling conditions.
• Spain remains largely anchored in ius sanguinis. Children of foreign parents born in Spain are not citizens automatically, although minors born in the country benefit from shorter residence requirements than adults when applying for citizenship.

Already at this stage the pattern is clear: automatic, unconditional ius soli survives primarily in North America, while the larger European systems have moved toward hybrid or “tempered” models that combine birthplace with conditions on parents and residence.

Other European countries: hybrid models, no “pure” ius soli

If we extend the lens to other EU and European states, the picture becomes even more consistent.

Ireland historically had broad ius soli, but reforms have restricted automatic citizenship: today, birth on Irish territory is no longer enough on its own, and the parents’ status and residence play a critical role. Many other EU countries (for example, the Netherlands, Belgium, and the Nordic countries use variations on the same theme: ius sanguinis remains the backbone, while some form of ius soli appears only as an additional option, usually tied to residence duration or school attendance.

In practice, this means that:

• No EU member state applies “pure”, unconditional ius soli in the U.S./Canadian sense.
• Several countries allow children born on their territory to acquire citizenship more easily, but almost always subject to residence, integration, or parental‑status requirements.
• The legal vocabulary is similar – ius soli, ius sanguinis, ius culturae – but the underlying thresholds and time frames differ enough that they matter for both legal practice and translation.

From a comparative‑law perspective, ius soli in Europe is less a defining principle and more an adjustment mechanism: a way to soften a strictly descent‑based regime, without embracing automatic citizenship by birth.

The Americas: where unconditional ius soli survives

The Americas offer a very different landscape. Alongside the United States and Canada, most Latin American countries still recognize ius soli in its straightforward form: birth on national territory generally leads to citizenship, again with standard exceptions. For practical purposes, this means:

• In much of North, Central, and South America, children of foreign nationals become citizens of the country where they are born.
• Access to citizenship is therefore less tied to parents’ nationality and more to territorial connection, at least at the basic level.
• Later layers – residence, registration, documentation – can still be complex, but the starting point is different from the European approach.

This concentration of unconditional ius soli in the Western Hemisphere is one of the more striking features of the global map. It also explains why debates around birthright citizenship often look very different in a European parliament than in a Latin American one.

Why this matters (especially for law and translation)

For lawyers and legal translators, these distinctions are not just academic. They affect how we read and render texts on nationality, migration, minors’ rights, and even criminal or family law.

A few practical consequences:

• The same Latin labels (ius soli, ius sanguinis) cover quite different regimes depending on the country, so they can’t be treated as interchangeable “keywords” when translating or comparing statutes.
• Terms like “birth in the territory”, “permanent residence”, “continuous lawful residence”, or “minor” sit at the center of many of these rules and need to be handled with care across languages.
• Changes in one jurisdiction (for example, a tightening of residence requirements, or a shift from automatic to conditional ius soli) immediately ripple into casework, advice to clients, and cross‑border procedures.

If you work with citizenship law, immigration, or cross‑border family cases – or if you translate in these areas – it’s worth keeping this comparative picture in mind. Europe and the Americas are using the same conceptual toolkit, but the way those tools are assembled into actual rules of citizenship by birth is markedly different.

No, AI won’t save a weak translation: subject-matter knowledge still matters

1. The “AI will cover my weak spots” story

An insidiously comforting story is doing the rounds: powerful AI has done away with the gap between specialist and non‑specialist translators. In this story, subject‑matter expertise quietly moves from a must to an afterthought: you can work with inexperienced (and conveniently cheap) translators, run everything through an MTPE process, or even exclude translators altogether and ask monolingual staff to confirm that the AI’s output looks respectable enough to ship.

The promise is simple: if the machine “knows” chemistry, finance, or property law, then the only need for a professional is as a token “human in the loop”, someone to tidy up the target language, accept most suggestions, and – most importantly – take the blame if the project goes wrong. It’s a reassuring picture for buyers under pressure to cut costs. The problem is that it bears little resemblance to how translation decisions should be taken in high‑risk situations or for specialized content.

In my workflow – the one I outlined in the first article of this series – AI only comes in after a human draft is complete. I translate first in a CAT tool, using glossaries and whatever domain knowledge I’ve built up; I revise and run proper QA.

Only then do I ask an AI assistant to review terminology, register, and style, with a strict “no change if the translation is already correct” constraint. AI can suggest alternative phrasings and highlight relevant references, but it can’t decide what’s appropriate for a specific audience, legal system, or communicative purpose. That judgment still depends on subject‑matter expertise.

2. Where AI fits

The key point of my first article was simple: AI is helpful in review because it can propose alternative translations, catch possible mistranslations, or suggest options I hadn’t thought of. As a primary translator, though, it’s dangerous: it will always produce a translation, but there is no guarantee that what it offers is correct rather than an unthinking literal translation or a smooth, fluent hallucination. That’s why I have two basic rules in my prompts for the review step: if the segment is already correct, the AI should say so and not suggest changes; and whenever it suggests a change, it should explain why.

The chemistry example from Article 1 – where “third/fourth/fifth/sixth group” became “group 13/14/15/16 elements” – worked because I knew enough about the subject to question the suggestion, and could then find evidence that it made sense in context.

This article picks up that thread. If AI is going to review our work, we still need the subject‑matter knowledge to decide when its suggestions are helpful, not merely plausible.

To give a concrete example, let’s look at a term that appears all the time in Italian property documents: catasto.

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3. When the “correct” term isn’t clear

3.1 From “cadastre” to “land registry”

In Italian real‑estate documents, the words catasto and catastale crop up everywhere: contracts for the purchase, sale, or lease of property, and notarial deeds that formalize those transactions. They refer to the Italian land registry system, which records properties, their location and boundaries, and various values used for tax purposes. I see these terms in work for US clients buying or renting property in Italy, who need to understand what they’re signing. For them, the question isn’t “What is the technically correct term?”, but “What wording gives me a clear picture of what this document actually does, and whether I understand it well enough to sign it?”.

3.2 AI or MT’s usual choices

AI systems and MT engines almost always go for “cadastre” or “cadastral” when they translate catasto / catastale, terms that sound satisfyingly technical and precise. Black’s Law Dictionary, for example, defines “cadastre” as “a survey and valuation of real estate […] compiled for tax purposes”. For US lay readers, the term may look impressive, but it is opaque, because it does nothing to help them understand how a “cadastral survey” fits into the process of buying an apartment.

In real‑estate contracts and notarial deeds, this leads to prose that looks precise but fails to convey its meaning. A clause mentioning a mappa catastale may emerge as “cadastral map”, a reference to rendita catastale as “cadastral income”, and a simple check at the land office as “cadastral survey”. US buyers reading such phrases understand little: they don’t know who keeps these records, what authority they carry, or how they relate to anything they’ve seen back home.

3.3 Why I usually prefer “land registry”

When I translate for US clients dealing with Italian property, my guiding principle is simple: the client must be able to understand the meaning. I therefore generally prefer “land register” or “land registry” over “cadastre”, even if the latter looks closer to the Italian term. To a US reader, “land registry” signals “official place where property records are kept”, which is close enough conceptually and easier to understand for a non‑specialist.

So visura catastale is more helpful as something like “extract from the land registry (visura catastale)” than as a bare “cadastral search”. Mappa catastale becomes “land registry map” or “land registry plan”, depending on the document. For rendita catastale, I normally use an explanatory translation: for example, “notional property income for tax purposes (rendita catastale)”, keeping the Italian term in brackets so that any later cross‑checking with Italian documents or forms is easier.

This doesn’t mean “cadastre” is always wrong. In a different context – for instance, a technical article explaining how the Italian land registry system works – I might very well keep “cadastre” in my translation.

The important distinction is audience and purpose: translations should serve their intended function in the target context rather than mechanically mirror the source. AI can tell you that catasto often maps to “cadastre”, and it can list definitions and examples. What it cannot do is weigh up whether your specific readers are better served by that term, or by a more accessible “land registry” plus a brief explanation.

That is where professional subject‑matter knowledge and judgment come into play. AI proposes strings of words; a professional understands what those words mean, and which are appropriate for the task at hand.

3.4 “But you can always add a glossary”

A fair objection is that terminological issues can be handled through glossaries or client‑specific termbases. If a client decides that catasto is always “land registry” in their English documents, an automatic system (whether AI‑ or MT‑based) can be instructed to translate it so.

That’s helpful as far as it goes, but it doesn’t solve the underlying problem: even a mandated term still has to make sense for a specific audience and in a specific situation, and someone must know when that glossary choice no longer serves that purpose. Glossaries encode past decisions; they don’t remove the need to make new ones when the context shifts.

3.5 “Private international law” or “conflict of laws”?

The same pattern appears in other fields: AI offers something that looks legally or technically correct, but only subject‑matter knowledge tells you whether it fits the system, the audience, and the purpose of the text.

Take a standard sentence that a law firm might use to describe some services it offers:

Lo studio assiste i clienti in materia di diritto internazionale privato, ad esempio per individuare la legge applicabile ai rapporti patrimoniali tra coniugi di diversa cittadinanza.

A first draft translation might be:

The firm assists clients in matters of private international law, for example, in determining the law applicable to property relations between spouses of different nationalities.

Linguistically, there’s nothing wrong with that. An MT system or a rushed human translator could easily stop there. During review, though, I might decide to recast it as:

The firm advises clients on conflict‑of‑laws matters, for example, in determining which law applies to matrimonial property regimes between spouses of different nationalities.

Here I’m not correcting a mistranslation; I’m choosing a formulation that makes more sense for the likely readership. In an academic context, “private international law” may be the natural field label, and I would keep it as is, perhaps adding “(conflict of laws)” on first mention for US‑trained lawyers. In a law‑firm profile aimed at lay clients, though, I favor the more common “conflict of laws” and make “matrimonial property regimes” explicit.

AI can give you “private international law” and even offer “conflict of laws” as an alternative. What it cannot do is decide which label fits this specific text for this specific readership. That decision rests on your knowledge of how lawyers talk about these issues and how much conceptual scaffolding your readers already have.

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4. “Truth is always a defense”: when the words are fine but the content isn’t

Sometimes the problem is not the translation but what the source text is claiming. Imagine a global corporate policy drafted at US headquarters:

Under our global communications policy, truth is always a complete defense to any defamation claim.

A correct translation might be something like:

Secondo la nostra politica globale sulle comunicazioni, la verità è sempre una difesa completa contro qualsiasi causa per diffamazione.

The translation is correct and mirrors the English source text. An inexperienced translator might sign off on it; even an experienced one, under time pressure, might not give it a thought. Yet anyone who knows a bit of Italian defamation law will feel uneasy. In the Italian legal system, even truthful statements can be defamatory if they unjustifiably harm a person’s honor or reputation. The neat “truth is always a complete defense” formula is simply incorrect in Italian law.

In a case like this, I would leave the Italian sentence as it is, because it reflects what the policy says, but I would flag it to the client. My note might say that this rule is modeled on US law and may need to be reviewed or rewritten for Italy before the policy is rolled out locally. No AI system will ever volunteer that comment: it does not know where one legal system stops and another begins.

This is another way subject‑matter expertise shows up in our work. Sometimes it means choosing “conflict of laws” over “private international law”. Sometimes it also means not changing a single word of the translation, but warning the client that the underlying claim doesn’t travel as well as they may think.

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5. Domain expertise, and how to build it

“Subject‑matter expertise” might sound like a grand label, something only actual experts like lawyers or engineers can claim, but it’s more modest and more attainable than that. It’s the cumulative result of studying, gaining experience, paying attention to how people in a given field communicate among themselves, and noticing where systems and expectations differ across languages.

Part of it is exposure: reading real‑world documents rather than only parallel texts and glossaries. For real‑estate work, that might mean notarial deed templates, tax guides, and English‑language information sites for foreign buyers. For legal work, it might mean court forms, statutes, bar association materials, and law‑firm blogs in both languages. Over time, you build a mental model of who the actors are, what institutions exist, which text types are standard, and how people phrase things when they’re not writing for translators.

Another part is building your own reference system. I like to keep a corpus for each niche: links to the Italian penal, civil, and procedural codes, to their US counterparts, PDFs of relevant articles, copies of online forms, client‑side FAQs, and a log of past decisions for tricky terms. My reasoning for the choice between “cadastre” and “land registry” goes into that log. So does the decision to use “conflict‑of‑laws matters” on a particular law‑firm website, or to flag a “truth is always a defense” policy line for legal review instead of quietly normalizing it.

Expertise shows in how you use AI, rather than whether you use it at all. If you already know what the catasto is, AI can help you compare “land registry” against “cadastre” in actual usage, or suggest alternative ways of phrasing an explanation for US buyers. If you already understand the difference between libel and slander in US law and Italian diffamazione, AI can help you find references and alternative wordings for a translator’s note. Without that base, the same tool is just as likely to lure you into mistakes, because it will give you authoritative‑sounding answers that fit the wrong system.

Subject‑matter knowledge is not an optional extra that AI makes less important. It is what allows you to decide when the machine’s output is good enough, when it needs adapting for your readers, and when the problem lies not in the words but in the underlying assumptions. That is the judgment clients should expect when they hire a professional translator, and it is the part of the job no model can take over for you.

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6. A practical subject‑matter checklist

I keep a simple checklist in mind when I translate with AI in the loop; at the top of that list is always to start with the purpose of the translation.[1]

1. What is the purpose of this translation?
What job does this text need to do in the target context – help a US buyer understand a contract, inform specialists, or support an academic article? The same Italian text may need to be translated differently in English for each purpose, as long as you don’t distort its legal effect and underlying meaning. An academic article on Italian property law might prefer “cadastre”, while the translation of a deed for a US buyer won’t.

2. Who will actually read it?
Are we translating for lay US property buyers, Italian notaries, in‑house counsel, or EU policy staff? Your choice between a specific technical term and an explanatory phrase depends on this. A term that works for a specialist audience may be pure noise for someone who just wants to know what happens if the roof leaks.

3. What does your audience need to do with it?
Do they need to sign it, follow it, file it, or simply be informed? Someone who has to sign a notarial deed needs more than a term that looks technically correct; they need a fair chance of understanding what they’re committing to. For a background briefing, on the other hand, a more technical label might be perfectly acceptable if it’s explained once.

4. Would this term mean anything to them?
If you showed your reader the term on its own, would they recognize it and know what it involves? If not, you need a better solution, possibly with the original term in brackets on first occurrence. That AI can define the word doesn’t mean your readers will understand it when they see it in a contract.

5. Is there a real‑world equivalent in the target system?
Does your audience’s country or legal system have an institution that plays a similar role, even if the match isn’t perfect? In many English‑language contexts, “land registry” is closer to what a US buyer expects than “cadastre”, even if the Italian catasto is not identical to any US office. The goal is a responsible approximation, not a one‑to‑one mirage.

6. How much risk is involved in this choice?
If a non‑specialist misunderstands this term, are we looking at mild confusion, or potential legal or financial consequences? The higher the risk, the less the translation can afford to hide behind a dictionary gloss or an AI suggestion that “sounds legal”. In regulated or high‑stakes domains, “defensible but potentially misleading or unclear” is often the worst of both worlds.

7. How does this interact with your existing terminology?
Will accepting the AI’s suggestion break consistency with your glossaries or previous work for this client or domain? Sometimes the fix is as simple as giving the AI a client glossary or termbase so that it stops inventing alternatives. But a glossary doesn’t remove the need for judgment; it just moves it upstream, to when terms are chosen and to the cases where the approved term doesn’t fit the purpose. And when a client questions an inconsistency, AI will not defend your choices for you.

8. What role do you want AI to play?
Are you asking AI to propose synonyms, retrieve definitions, check consistency, or simply sanity‑check a decision you’ve already made? If you catch yourself expecting it to decide which option fits your purpose and audience, that’s a red flag. In my workflow, once I’m clear on these questions, AI is there to challenge me and to point out blind spots, not to choose the target term on my behalf.

If you can’t answer several of these questions with reasonable confidence, the problem isn’t your review prompt or your choice of AI tool. It’s that you don’t yet understand the subject – or the translation’s purpose – well enough to delegate any part of the decision‑making. That’s not a criticism; it’s a signal about where to invest your next hours of research.

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7. Where this leaves human + AI workflows

Taken together, the picture is less dramatic than the “AI has done away with the gap” story, and much more useful. AI can help us check consistency, spot alternative phrasings, and compare how terms are used across sources, but it cannot decide which solution fits a given purpose, audience, and level of risk. That part depends on subject‑matter knowledge and on the professional responsibility you can’t outsource to a model.

In the workflow I described in Article 1, what matters most is when you use AI. I translate first, making concrete decisions about terms like catasto based on who will read the text and what they need to do with it; then I let AI challenge those decisions under strict “no unnecessary changes, always explain why” constraints. Used this way, AI doesn’t level the field between strong and weak translators; it widens the gap, because the more you know about your subject, the more the tool can help you.

The next articles in this series will pick up from here and get more practical. I’ll look at how to design prompts that reflect your existing decisions and glossaries, and at how to integrate AI review into a broader toolbench that includes CAT tools, QA checks, and your own reference material. The core principle, however, will stay the same: AI can speed up parts of the process, but it cannot think through our choices or take responsibility for them. That’s still our job – and it’s where a professional translator’s value lies.

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• Notes
  

  [1] Vermeer and Reiss’ Skopos theory reminds us that the purpose of the translation should guide our choices, and Andrew Chesterman’s Memes of Translation is still one of the clearest accounts of how ideas like this shape everyday practice.

Translation Notes: “Director”

Translating “Director” into Italian in legal, business, and financial contexts is less straightforward than it looks.

Meanings of “Director”

In English corporate practice, a director is usually a member of the board, i.e., part of the company’s governing organ. In job titles like “Finance Director” or “Marketing Director”, however, “director” often labels a senior manager heading a function, not necessarily a board member.

Italian translations

For Italian joint stock companies (“Società per Azioni”, or S.p.A.) and limited liability companies (“Società a responsabilità limitata”, or S.r.l.), the functional equivalent of a board “director” is an amministratore (or membro del consiglio di amministrazione). In this sense, director and amministratore both indicate a person who takes part in management and decision‑making at organ level.

Within the board, titles such as “managing director” or “executive director” are commonly rendered as amministratore delegato (or “AD”), who is both an amministratore (board member) and the top executive charged with day‑to‑day management. In current Italian practice, the amministratore delegato is often referred to by the English acronym “CEO”.

By contrast, direttore in today’s corporate Italian typically indicates a high‑ranking employee: direttore generale, direttore finanziario, direttore commerciale, etc. Modern legal drafting tends to reserve amministratore for members of the board and direttore for management roles within the organizational chart.

False friends and traps

The main trap is translating every “director” as direttore. When “director” refers to a board member, the correct Italian is amministratore or membro del consiglio di amministrazione, not direttore. A direttore generale is usually a top manager reporting to the board, not one of its members.

Rule of thumb

If the person sits on the board → amministratore / membro del consiglio di amministrazione.
If it’s a functional job title → direttore (+ area: finanziario, marketing, ecc.).

A couple of quick tricks to make the translation of legal texts easier

ALL CAPS PASSAGES

 If you regularly translate legal texts (such as EULAs), you’ll frequently encounter long passages where a single segment continues for many lines, with all the text shouting in UPPERCASE (and maybe even all bolded):

LOREM IPSUM DOLOR SIT AMET, CONSECTETUR ADIPISCING ELIT, SED DO EIUSMOD TEMPOR INCIDIDUNT UT LABORE ET DOLORE MAGNA ALIQUA. UT ENIM AD MINIM VENIAM, QUIS NOSTRUD EXERCITATION ULLAMCO LABORIS NISI UT ALIQUIP EX EA COMMODO CONSEQUAT. DUIS AUTE IRURE DOLOR IN REPREHENDERIT IN VOLUPTATE VELIT ESSE CILLUM DOLORE EU FUGIAT NULLA PARIATUR. EXCEPTEUR SINT OCCAECAT CUPIDATAT NON PROIDENT, SUNT IN CULPA QUI OFFICIA DESERUNT MOLLIT ANIM ID EST LABORUM

This is very hard to read, and therefore even harder to translate. To make it easier to translate, just select the whole passage, and hit Shift+F3 to convert the whole passage to lower case. You can then translate it, and, once you are satisfied with your translation, select the passage again, and hit Shift+F3 again to convert the passage to all uppercase. Works in MS Word, SDL Trados Studio and memoQ.  

Single segments with numerous subclauses

Another quirk of legal texts that may make them more difficult to translate is that they often contain long passages rife with numbered subclauses:

(i) consectetur adipiscing elit; (ii) sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua; (iii) ut enim ad minim veniam; (iv) quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat; (v) duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur; (vi) excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident; (vii) sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

This would be seen as a single segment by most CAT tools, a segment difficult to translate because too long. The best way to deal with this problem is to split the segment before each of the subclauses. You can do this either by suitably changing your CAT tool’s segmentation rules or by splitting the segment manually.

How to ensure poor translation results

 I've just received the following email from translated.net:

Ciao! Abbiamo appena ricevuto una richiesta di traduzione di 40.000 parole, con subject legal. Il documento (word caricato su Matecat) sarà diviso in link da 1.500 parole circa. I link saranno inviati domani mattina (ore 10.30 \ 11.00) e dovranno essere pronti entro le 17.00 del giorno stesso (14\06\2019).  Facci sapere se sei disponibile e se si per quanti link da 1.500 \ 2000 parole circa

For those who don't speak the execrable Italian-English mixture used in the above message, the following is a rough translation:

Hi! We have just received a request for the translation of 40,000 words, subject legal. The document (word loaded in Matecat) will be divided in sections of about 1,500 words each. The sections will be sent [to translators] tomorrow morning (by 10:30 - 11.00 AM) and must be ready by 5:00 PM on the same day (June 14, 2019). Let us know if you are available and, if so, how many 1,500-2,000 word sections you can take.

This means translating 1,500-2,000 words in a bare six hours or so (possible, though probably a bit tight, considering the subject), but it also means that the whole translation will be done by a group of between 20 and 27 translators. You'll notice there is no mention of terminology coordination (impossible anyway, given the time constrains), nor of editing or proofreading (and no sign of the rates offered).

Even assuming all translators who accept this "offer" are all good professionals (and, frankly, I doubt any good translator would participate in such a project), the resulting translation is likely to prove disastrous because of the inconsistencies that will inevitably crop in, given the likely number of translators and the little time available.

This is the recipe for a failed translation.

An interesting article on "Google Translate" and its legal implications

The Volokh Conspiracy, a law blog, recently published an interesting article on some legal implications of the use of Google Translate: "Google Translate" and the Law of Consent Searches.

A truly useful article on the quality of legal dictionaries

R. De Groot and Conrad Van Laer, of Mastrich University, published a few years ago a very useful article: The Quality of Legal Dictionaries: An Assessment.

In this article, De Groot and Van Laer assess the quality of many bilingual and multilingual legal dictionaries for the European Union languages. A truly interesting and useful part of the article is at the beginning, where the authors write some general remarks about translation issues to consider when tackling legal terminology - this is in effect a short but useful course on legal translation.

My thanks to Daniela Zambrini, who pointed this article out in a recent post on ProZ.

International Legal Translation Conference in Lisbon, October 7 and 8, 2011

If you are a legal translator, the International Legal Translation Conference that will be held in Lisbon on October 7 and 8 could be an interesting even to go to:

The Conference will feature two full days of practical learning sessions -- translation and terminology workshops (in Portuguese, English, Spanish, more languages if possible) -- for the professional translator and interpreter of legal materials.

Among the session abstracts there are several that sound interesting and of practical value for legal translators.

Attendance to the conference counts towards earning ATA's continuing education points.

I won't be able to attend this year (we are going to the ATA conference in Boston in October), but I'm seriously tempted for the future: I have very fond memories of the summer month I spent in Lisbon many years ago, attending a summer course in Portuguese and discovering a truly lovely city.

Pro se translators

A leading legal blog is trying to get a translation into English of a Mexican law on fire arms .

The initial translation was done via machine, and then reviewed and modified by very inexpert humans.

They are soliciting

readers with good Spanish skills to provide suggestions for improvements in any or all of the 91 Articles of the Mexican firearms law. Please focus on improving the translation.

That is, they are trying to get a long legal translation on a delicate subject requiring well-polished professional skills by relying on the skills of a mob of untrained amateurs.

I'm afraid my suggestion was a bit off-topic:

You could pay a professional and get a high-quality translation. A good legal translator should complete the translation in about a week (plus another couple of days for editing, by a second professional). If you ask an experienced translator, the cost will be around $2500 to $3000.

Or you can do what you are doing: rely on untrained amateurs and software programs, get the translation for free or on the cheap, and end with the quality you are paying for.

I know that many assume that mere knowledge of a language is enough to translate. A professional translator, however, is the product of a rigorous university and postgraduate course of study, followed, at least for those who succeed in their job, by several years' professional experience.

Hoping that untrained amateurs and a software program can produce a reliable translation is as plausible as hoping that a pro se defendant and a software program can produce a useful legal brief.

Update

Seems to have sparked a bit of a debate over there. From one of the commenters:

I would also recommend against paying for a professional translation. In addition to being ridiculously expensive, there' just no reason for it, particularly when one is translating into one's native language and has a decent knowledge of the original language.