Official translations are generally documents that serve as legally valid instruments. They include anything from certificates of birth, death or marriage through to academic transcripts or legal contracts. This field of translation is now as important as it is fraught with difficulties, for it is only in a few areas that the cultural differences are so acute and the consequences of failure so palpable. In a globalizing world, our official institutions increasingly depend on translations of official documents, but little has been done to elaborate the skills and dilemmas involved. Roberto Mayoral deals with the very practical problems of official translating. He points out the failings of traditional theories in this field and the need for revised concepts such as the virtual document, pragmatic constraints, and risk analysis. He details aspects of the social contexts, ethical norms, translation strategies, different formats, fees, legal formulas, and ways of solving the most frequent problems. Care is taken to address as wide a range of cultural contexts as possible and to stress the active role of the translator. This book is intended as a teaching text for the classroom, for self-learning, or for professionals who want to reflect on their practice. Activities and exercises are suggested for each chapter, and information is included on professional associations and societies across the globe.

Corinne McKay's blog Thoughts on Translation is one of the web's liveliest gathering places for freelance translators...now available in book format Wondering whether to charge by the word or by the hour? How to receive payments from clients in foreign countries? How to write a translation-targeted resume? It's all in here, in chunks that take just a few minutes to read. Corinne McKay is also the author of "How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator," the original career how-to guide for freelance translators, with over 5,000 copies in print. Her practical, down-to-earth tips are based on her own experience launching and running a successful freelance translation business after a first career as a high school teacher.

This introduction to technical translation and usability draws on a broad range of research and makes the topic both accessible and applicable to those involved in the practice and study of translation. Readers learn how to improve and assess the quality of technical translations using cognitive psychology, usability engineering and technical communication. A practical usability study illustrates the theories, methods and benefits of usability engineering.

Official translations are generally documents that serve as legally valid instruments. They include anything from certificates of birth, death or marriage through to academic transcripts or legal contracts. This field of translation is now as important as it is fraught with difficulties, for it is only in a few areas that the cultural differences are so acute and the consequences of failure so palpable. In a globalizing world, our official institutions increasingly depend on translations of official documents, but little has been done to elaborate the skills and dilemmas involved. Roberto Mayoral deals with the very practical problems of official translating. He points out the failings of traditional theories in this field and the need for revised concepts such as the virtual document, pragmatic constraints, and risk analysis. He details aspects of the social contexts, ethical norms, translation strategies, different formats, fees, legal formulas, and ways of solving the most frequent problems. Care is taken to address as wide a range of cultural contexts as possible and to stress the active role of the translator. This book is intended as a teaching text for the classroom, for self-learning, or for professionals who want to reflect on their practice. Activities and exercises are suggested for each chapter, and information is included on professional associations and societies across the globe.

The translation of law has played an integral part in the interaction among nations in history and is playing a greater role in our increasingly interconnected world today. The book investigates legal translation in its many facets as an intellectual pursuit and a profession. It examines legal translation from an interdisciplinary perspective, covering theoretical and practical grounds and linguistic as well as legal issues. It analyses legal translation competence and various types of legal texts including contracts, statutes and multilateral legal instruments, presents a comparative analysis of the Common Law and the Civil Law and examines the case law from Canada, Hong Kong and the European Court of Justice. It attempts to demonstrate that translating law is a complex act that can enrich law, culture and human experience as a whole.

Arabic-English-Arabic Legal Translation provides a groundbreaking investigation of the issues found in legal translation between Arabic and English. Drawing on a contrastive-comparative approach, it analyses parallel authentic legal documents in both Arabic and English to examine the features of legal discourse in both languages and uncover the different translation techniques used. In so doing, it addresses the following questions: What are the features of English and Arabic legal texts? What are the similarities and differences of English and Arabic legal texts? What are the difficult areas of legal translation between English and Arabic legal texts? What are the techniques for translating these difficult areas on the lexical and syntactic levels? Features include: A thorough description of the features of legal translation in both English and Arabic, drawing on empirical new research, corpus data analysis and strategic two-way comparisons between source texts and target texts Coverage of a broad range of topics including an outline of the chosen framework for data analysis, a historical survey of legal discourse developments in both Arabic and English and detailed analyses of legal literature at both the lexical and syntactic levels Attention to common areas of difficulty such as Shariah Law terms, archaic terms and model auxiliaries Many examples and excerpts from a wide selection of authentic legal documents, reinforced by practical discussion points, exercises and practice drills to encourage active engagement with the material and opportunities for hands-on learning. Wide-ranging, scholarly and thought-provoking, this will be a valuable resource for advanced undergraduates and postgraduates on Arabic, Translation Studies and Comparative Linguistics courses. It will also be essential reading for translation professionals and researchers working in the field.