Written Translation of Non-Specialized and Semi-Specialized Texts
Concepts
Written translation is judged on fidelity plus naturalness: the target text must convey the same information, in the same register, with the same legal effect. Survey the document before drafting - identify its type (birth certificate, affidavit, court order, letter, police report), its function, and its fixed formulae. Build a glossary for recurring terms and keep one rendering throughout. Preserve numbers, dates, amounts, case numbers, and names exactly; convert date formats deliberately, since 03/12/2024 is ambiguous. Handle untranslatable items (stamps, seals, abbreviations, honorifics, addresses) by translating, transliterating, or annotating consistently - never drop them silently.
Traps
Literal calques that shift meaning; changing register (“said” versus “aforesaid”); inconsistent terminology for the same concept; dropping a repeated qualifier or a negative; mistranslating legal doublets; “improving” a poorly written source instead of translating it. Certification blocks and signature lines must be translated as text, not summarized or skipped.
Rule of thumb
Three passes: read for meaning, draft in meaning units rather than word by word, then proofread against the source line by line. If a passage cannot be rendered faithfully without a note, add a translator’s note rather than inventing an equivalence.
Worked example
A certificate ends with “IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand.” A word-for-word rendering into many languages is unintelligible; the correct move is the established target-language formula for certifying signature, with the literal content preserved in meaning.