Recently a private client asked me to “look over” an MT French – English translation which she hoped to refer to in a forthcoming court hearing. She had decided to save money on the cost of a translator’s fees for translating a 30 page document – thus the MT translation. This is despite the fact that the case involves sensitive high – net worth financial information!
Her solicitor had specified which clauses in the document were the most important ones for the court hearing so these were the ones that the client asked me to check. There were about 5 such clauses.
Almost immediately I noticed issues to do with layout, capital letters or rather lack of which had to be rectified to accurately reflect the contents of the original French document.
Interestingly there weren’t any omissions as such but there were several americanisms such as “real estate” instead of “real property” and several “gobbledygook” sentences where the machine had simply failed to understand meaning.
Having rectified the specified clauses I then advised the client that the rectifications would now impact on some of the other clauses in the rest of the document. This involved further checks by me (at a further cost to the client) to ensure that there were no inconsistencies or worse still contradictions.
Finally I advised the client that my Translator’s Certificate could only refer to the work that I had actually done so it would not be referring to translation of the entire document because my instructions only related to certain clauses thereof.
In my opinion whether or not the judge will accept an amended MT translation and/ or my (partial) translator’s certificate is uncertain but watch this space!