E-ging Solutions is a world-leading Shanghai translation company with specialties in legal translation.
If you are a
legal translator,then the following scenario should sound familiar. Your
stressed-out lawyer client hires you on short notice to translate a complex
legal document under a tight deadline. As the deadline approaches, you scurry
to complete your proofreading while facing a barrage of e-mails and calls from
your client’s neurotic legal assistant. You begin to surmise that several
high-priced professionals,with their meters running, are waiting around for
your work. You manage to deliver the final product,but moments later get a
nasty pit in your stomach. What if a mistake was missed in the translation?
What if the client’s own client makes a costly,and incorrect, decision based on
that mistake? Will you be held liable for all of the problems arising from that
one error? Your anxiety will undoubtedly grow as you recall that the client is
a lawyer, whose basic tool of the trade is also language and whose very
livelihood probably consists of enforcing claims against people who make
mistakes.
What follows will
describe very broadly the general legal framework for translator liability in
situations like the one I just described. It will also offer a brief
explanation of how the law itself provides translators with some protection
against such liability. Please note that this article does not purport to be,
and should not be relied upon as, legal advice.
First Semester of Law
School Any translator liability would be based on a theory of contract law
and/or tort law, areas typically covered in the first semester of law school. A
tort is a private or civil wrong arising from a violation of a legal duty
recognized by law. It serves as the grounds for a lawsuit. The primary aim of
tort law is to provide relief for the injury or damages caused by one person to
another and to deter others from committing such harms.
So, for instance, if
the translator and the client have a direct contract with each other (like the
translator and lawyer in the scenario at the beginning of this article), then
the client would likely assert a claim against the translator based on the
terms of that contract in the event he or she suffers a loss from that
translation mistake. If the injured person is not a client and does not have a
contract with the translator but is nevertheless harmed by the translation
mistake (perhaps the lawyer’s client in our scenario), then that injured third
party could assert a claim against the translator based on the theory of tort
law
The basic rule under
contract law is that if the translator and the client have formed a binding
translation contract and the translator fails to perform that contract in
accordance with the contract’s terms and conditions (i.e., if he or she
“breaches” the contract), then the client may demand that the translator pay compensation
for any damages that the client incurred due to that breach.
