The ATA Chronicle - January/February 2018 - 14

FEATURE

BY MARTIN CROSS
are being translated for another purpose.
But even when something lands in your
inbox with no context, there may be clues
pointing to its potential use as evidence
that a good detective can spot.
The first is the file format. It's
exceedingly rare for legal evidence to be
in the form of an editable text file, such as
Microsoft Word, HTML, or a file formatted
for use by a computer-assisted translation
tool. Documents for court submission
are overwhelmingly in PDF format. This
characteristic is particularly telling in
the case of documents that you would
otherwise expect to receive in editable
format. Scanned journal and newspaper
articles, PDF copies of emails and letters,
screengrabs of websites, hardcopies of
financial reports, and printed advertising
are all more likely to be used to prove
what happened in the past than to serve
some new purpose in the future. Another
giveaway is the document's age. If you're
asked to work on medical records,
contracts, or expense reports that date
back several years, ask yourself why they
are being translated now.

Evidentiary Translation for U.S. Courts
The evidentiary translator should observe like a detective, be faithful like a
court interpreter, and decide like a judge.

M

any translators make evidentiary
translation their specialization,
but others reading this article
will be freelancers whose translations
are used in the courts without their
knowledge because their agency clients
don't tell them. In both cases, the end
user will evaluate the work based on
its suitability as legal evidence. Beyond
customer satisfaction, if your translations
are going to be used in the justice system,
you naturally want them to be well
suited to the administration of justice.
This is no minor consideration. To
produce a translation that's suitable for
use as evidence, we must take a specific
approach that differs greatly from best
translation practice in other fields.
Fortunately, there are some role
models we can turn to for guidance. The
evidentiary translator should observe
14

The ATA Chronicle | January/February 2018

like a detective, be faithful like a court
interpreter, and decide like a judge.

SPOTTING DOCUMENTS THAT
MAY BE USED AS EVIDENCE
Our first job as a detective is spotting
those documents that may be used as
evidence. This is easy if you see that each
page is stamped with "Confidential-
Attorney's Eyes Only" or bears a Bates
number (a page identifier that starts with
a trial name or letter code followed by a
long serial number), which is used as a
method of indexing legal documents for
easy identification and retrieval.1 (See
Figure 1 on page 15 for an example.)
There are also some documents that
are evidentiary by nature, such as birth
certificates, diplomas, and licences.
Published patents also fall into this class,
unless you're specifically told that they

For an evidentiary translator,
the document is the witness.
Once you've done your preliminary
detective work, it makes sense to confirm
your suspicions with the client. While
agencies don't always know how the
translations they broker will be used,
if you think it's likely that a document
is being used for evidence, try asking
the agency if the client is a law firm.
Even when dealing with direct clients, a
common answer to questions about these
sorts of documents is that they "just want
to know what it says." While that may be
true for the moment, there's good reason
to take a longer view. Now is the time to
step into your role as a judge.

PREPARING EVIDENTIARY
TRANSLATIONS
It's routine for people to review
documents, including translations, well
before deciding whether to begin civil
litigation. Once the wheels of justice start
turning, however, they will invariably
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The ATA Chronicle - January/February 2018
