The system of providing free advice about the law and practical help with legal matters for individuals who are unable or poor to pay for legal aid services is what we refer as legal aid. Why is the translation of such legal aid help to poor people considered a necessity?
Organizations that offer legal help to people always face some problems, mostly language barriers when doing their work in communities that need their help, so the only way to solve that language problem is put translation or interpretation services to bridge the gap between the legal aid service providers and the needy. This is why legal aid translation is a necessity because legal aid providers can’t do their work smoothly without, it may instead be meaningless to talk to people who don’t understand or read what you are aiming at. It might be helping a criminal in court, translation of legal documents is a necessity than a want and this will ease the lawyer’s work as well.
What legal aid translation covers
Legal aid translation as a necessity covers the translation of important documents and texts such as;
- Appeals
- Trademarks, patents, copyrights
- Certificates
- Tenders
- Judicial transcripts
- General law likes crimes, punishments, proceedings in criminal cases, real and personal property, domestic relations etc.
With the above documents, the translation should be accurate and processed by highly qualified legal translators and interpreters because any mistake in the translation may lead to legal penalties.
Circumstances under which legal aid translation is a necessity
Basing on the terminologies involved in legal aid documents and in the legal field, when it comes to a client reading the document, it may become a problem. Whether someone is highly educated, it might be in a different field, hence facing a problem in understanding legal terminologies. This is where we find legal aid translations as a necessity than a want. To accurately translate these terminologies we also need a translator who is qualified in the legal field not just because a person is a translator. Legal translators understand and have knowledge in translating all related legal sentences and terminologies into a target language.
Communication is very important when conducting any business, legal aid service providers must whether they like or not communicate with their clients and they need a mutual understanding of each other. Therefore, to ease communication in this aspect, legal aid translation is a solution, hence qualifying to be a necessity.
Legal aid translation becomes a necessity than a want when a client is represented in court by a lawyer. An accurately translated document into the client’s native language will easy the lawyer’s work to engage with the client, this is mostly when it comes to the vocabulary, grammar, and sentence structure.
For legal aid service providers, mostly United Nations, NGO’s that operate across borders, helping the poor, disabled, and all other categories of people who need legal aid help, for example, Red cross that always helps people with health issues and at times those affected by disasters like floods, earthquakes, drought, and wars, Etc, there is also Save the Children that always help children with shelter, immunization food, and any other legal assistance around the world. I see legal aid translation service for them as a necessity. As we know, the global world has different languages used in different continents, and countries and different legal laws governing them. When delivering translations or interpretation, a person who is familiar with legal laws of the country targeted is needed and all the documents that involve vital issues must be translated into the native language of a particular group of people reached.
Legal aid service providers could, at first, have their legal documents translated into the most spoken languages worldwide such as the French, German, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Chinese (Mandarine or Cantonese), Arabic, Spanish and English and also consider other languages such as the Lithuanian, Slovenian, Slovakian etc, depending on the group of a particular language native speakers that are targeted.
Legal aid service providers should use legal aid translation companies to get professional and accurate legal aid translation services, these are believed to have professional translators of different languages to provide translation services to their clients whenever contacted
