CHAPTER FOUR

STORIES OF LEGAL TRANSLATORS

“At the heart of any story are the people and their lives.”

(Cavendish, 2011, p. 01)

As elaborated in Chapter Three, in implementing this project, it is requisite for me to approach legal
translators from other law firms for help and I have been incredibly fortunate to be welcomed into
stories of ten legal translators from eight different law firms. All of them generously agreed to
participate in the project in spite of their heavy schedule. Their willingness to take a risk with their
stories shared with me is the deciding factor that gives life to this study. Before narrating their
stories, though, it is essential to share my own.

MY STORY

Translation Education

Following the completion of high school, I did English Language as my undergraduate degree at Ho
Chi Minh City Open University (HCMCOU), which took me about four and a half years. This
institution of higher education provides a variety of programs from undergraduate to postgraduate,
ranging from distance learning, on-site, learning at satellite academic centers, and its Faculty of
Foreign Languages is considered one of the most well-known faculties within and outside the
institution that greatly contributes to the university’s success. The Faculty’s majors were different
back then with English Language being the only major whereas majors presently offered by it
include English, Chinese and Japanese. I had no other choice but English at that time and I opted to
move forward with English Translation and Interpretation, which was truly a momentous decision
that shaped my entire life. I enjoyed the course immensely and my passion for English was also
developed since then. It is such lifelong passion that urged me to study hard and my high final
grades demonstrate my constant efforts. Besides the university’s course, I also attended extra
classes in the evening in English grammar at elementary to advanced level and in translation of both
the local and foreign press during years of university. For press-based translation training, I learned
to translate into Vietnamese English articles on a foreign newspaper in such various fields as
economy, finance, environment, medicine, to name a few, and translated into English Vietnamese
brief news on a Vietnamese newspaper. It was such extra translation training provided by a good

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teacher that helped to vastly improve my translation skills. I graduated from HCMCOU in 2006 as
the second highest ranked student in the Faculty and this significantly assisted my future career in
translation.

My First Translation Job

My first translation job came to me when I was a second-year student of English major at
HCMCOU and it turned out to be a highly rewarding experience that I have ever had. By that time,
a Vietnamese publisher based in HCMC, First News – Tri Viet, was looking for part-time editors
and translators who would be in charge of editing and translating books for self-development,
entertainment and solutions for real life obstacles with flexible working hours and environment. The
recruitment had not come to my knowledge until my close friend told me about it and recommended
me to file an application to the publisher. Honestly, book translation was quite a new area to me
back then as my course merely provided basic translation training without any specialized
translation field included; still I decided to take my chances. It was interesting that the publisher
contacted me few days later upon receipt of my application and asked for a face-to-face
conversation, together with other applicants. All the applicants were given two kinds of documents,
i.e. a Vietnamese translation of a book chapter and an English short story, and our task was to edit
the Vietnamese translation and translate the short story into Vietnamese. We were given one week
to finish both the requirements and I was fortunate enough to submit the task in time but it was no
doubt a tough test to take. In taking the test, I was not certain of being selected, given my limited
translation knowledge at the time, I was chosen though as a part-time translator who would translate
English books comprising short stories as specifically assigned by the publisher. That was truly a
glorious feeling that a second-year student of English major could feel and it was really hard to tell
how happy I was about hearing such amazing news. At first, the publisher gave me a whole book of
different short stories and asked me to choose any stories that inspire me to translate at my absolute
discretion. Although I translated a few stories only in such manner, my work satisfied the publisher
and they asked me to take responsibility for translating the entirety of other similar books as a
result. I could not exactly express how joyful and surprising I was, but it was one of the proudest
moments of my life, to be sure. Becoming a book translator at the age of 22 when I was just an
undergraduate was quite an experience, especially when I saw my name printed solemnly on each
book upon its publication or when I saw someone read or buy any books translated by me at
bookstores. During a period of five years, from 2004 to 2009, working as a book translator, I had 7

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books published and reprinted regularly by the publisher but more importantly, I lived a meaningful
life thanks to such invaluable experience.

A Professional Legal Translator

August, 2011
It was 6:00 am when I received a call from my former teacher who taught me English Translation
and Interpretation and some other subjects at HCMCOU. His call surprised me really as we had not
kept in contact with each other for a few years. I was a lecturer of English at Vietnamese-American
Vocational Training College (known as “VATC”) at the time and being a competent and skilled
English teacher was a goal I was pursuing. The reason why he called was soon uncovered as he
went straight to the point. He was the then chief legal translator of a Vietnamese law firm and,
given the firm’s heavy workload, he sensed a need to have one more junior translator to support him
in his daily work and I was thought to be an appropriate candidate for the post. Since he taught me
translation and interpretation skills and other subjects relevant to English major, he knew very well
my abilities and I did impressed him with my performance and final results during his courses. He
asked me if I wanted to work in his current firm as a junior legal translator and he had absolute right
to choose one for him even though I had never involved in legal translation before. The news was
so sudden that I did not know what to do so I asked him to give me time to think and would respond
to him shortly. What concerned me most was my lack of experience in legal translation as well as
knowledge of the field. As above mentioned in my educational background, what I learned at
HCMCOU was purely basic translation and interpretation with no specialized translation provided
and my extra knowledge of press-based translation was of no help in this case also while legal
translation was the one in demand. This job offer, indeed, put me in a difficult situation when I both
wanted to continue my teaching and to earn a stable income that my teaching job back then failed to
commit. Although I love teaching more, I agreed to take the job after a few days considering
seriously the offer since a secure income outweighed my desire for teaching, having regarded my
difficult life at the time the opportunity came.

September, 2011
I started my first day at my very first law firm on September 05 th, 2011. I was saved a seat next to
my former teacher who gave me this job as we were in a team then. Since that time, he was my
superior and I had to follow his instructions on how to do my daily work as agreed between him and
the firm’s partners. Upon receiving my first translation task on the day, a look of panic crossed my

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face. Several English words in the document were like strangers staring at me as I had never seen
them before and although I was familiar with some of those words, I could not understand even a
single sentence since the words convey totally different meanings in legal context. To take one
example, the following simple sentence did scare me when I first saw it: “The Mortgagor enters
into this Agreement in connection with the Onshore Facility Agreement (as defined below).” First, I
did not know certain words in the sentence, e.g. Mortgagor and Onshore Facility Agreement.
Second, from what I already knew about such words as enter into (take part in), agreement (the
state of sharing the same opinion or feeling), connection (link), and facilities (buildings, services,
equipment, etc. that are provided for a particular purpose), I believed I could not apply such
meanings as provided in parentheses to this context for they turned out to be inappropriate or
meaningless. I was even more frightened when I could not look up appropriate meanings of the
above words/phrases, e.g. Onshore Facility Agreement, in language dictionaries. Hopelessly, I
could not do anything in such situation but asking my superior for help and it was so lucky that I
have one. To help me familiarize myself with legal terminologies as well as legal context, he sent
me a glossary of terminologies that he has accumulated and updated on a regular basis over years of
his employment as a legal translator. He additionally sent me a Vietnamese template for the
document I was handling so that I could refer to it for the standard form of Vietnamese wording for
this kind of legal document. Back to the above example, all the strange terms became clearer after I
got the glossary and the template: Mortgagor (an individual or company who borrows money to
purchase a piece of real property) and there is a fixed Vietnamese term for it, i.e. “Bên Thế Chấp”;
enter into (to sign); agreement (contract); in connection with (connected with somebody/
something); and Onshore Facility Agreement (domestic loan agreement), and the whole sentence
could then be understood as follows: “The Mortgagor sign this Agreement/Contract connected with
the Domestic Loan Agreement (as defined below).” In a word, I did experience legal translation
first-hand in my first day at work, through which I became more aware of how challenging my job
is as well as how essential for me to familiarize myself with legal context and terminologies as fast
as I can. Thanks to the glossary from my superior, high frequency of similar legal templates, and
my huge efforts, I was able to do my job more smoothly a month later, October 2011, once I was
more acquainted with terminologies frequently used in my firm and also the Vietnamese wording of
a number of agreements/contracts. Still, I had to learn day after day upon encountering new
terminologies and new contexts and, at the same time, build and update my own glossary of terms, a
priceless treasure of every legal translator, on a daily basis.

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October, 2011 to Present
My employment at my first law firm lasted from September, 2011 to September, 2013. I did acquire
considerable knowledge relevant to legal industry and its belongings, but most importantly, my
translation skills and as well such other skills and qualities as are essential for a legal translator
were greatly developed during such two years. That was because legal translation involves a
number of different factors. Specifically, I always had a great deal to do to fulfill any translation
tasks in the most satisfactory manner, and it was a difficult process to go through indeed. Apart
from terminologies, lengthy sentences with strange or difficult structures, legal knowledge and
background knowledge of a particular area were other tough challenges faced by this brand new
legal translator in dealing with any legal document at the time. As regards terminologies, most of
the time I hardly found appropriate meanings on language online dictionaries like Oxford, Longman
or Cambridge. Thus, I had to search thoroughly on Google, namely through Black’s Law
Dictionary, Investopedia, BusinessDictionary.com, and other sites reflecting the terms/expressions,
until the meaning or explanation that was deemed most appropriate to the context is found. A good
example of this is the ‘Investopedia’. When I looked up the word ‘indemnity’ on Investopedia, I
found the following:

DEFINITION of 'Indemnity'
Compensation for damages or loss. Indemnity in the legal sense may also refer to an
exemption from liability for damages. The concept of indemnity is based on a contractual
agreement made between two parties, in which one party agrees to pay for potential losses or
damages caused by the other party. A typical example is an insurance contract, whereby one
party (the insurer) agrees to compensate the other (the insured) for any damages or losses, in
return for premiums paid by the insured to the insurer.

INVESTOPEDIA EXPLAINS 'Indemnity'

Indemnity may be paid in the form of cash, or by way of repairs or replacement, depending on
exactly what is spelled out in the indemnity agreement.

(Investopedia, http://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/indemnity.asp)

It is undeniable that the site provides clear and detailed explanation of the term with specific context
included so that there will not be a single misunderstanding about such term. Likewise, other
websites as named above work the same way and from my own experience, they are good and
reliable sources for searching terminologies in a variety of fields. Such extensive search was time-
consuming and tiring truly, this process, nevertheless, opened up the access to a variety of useful

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websites that greatly supported my job in a way that I would translate more smoothly once I fully
grasped the meaning of all terminologies and, in the meantime, my legal and background
knowledge of the field I was dealing with was also considerably broadened. Another significant
advantage brought by this process was that my searching skills remarkably improved, resulting in
more effective translation with lesser time consumed just in the first year of my employment at the
firm. Aside from the sustainable development of the above-said searching abilities, I simultaneously
had opportunities to sharpen other practical and necessary skills that the position requires, i.e.
reading comprehension and analytical skills to get the precise meaning of extremely long sentences
with odd or difficult structures:

“Negative pledge: The Guarantor will not, and will not permit any Significant Subsidiary to,
directly or indirectly, incur, assume or permit to exist any Lien of any nature whatsoever on
any of its assets or properties of any kind, whether owned on the date of this Agreement or
thereafter acquired, to secure any Relevant Indebtedness, except Permitted Liens, unless the
Guarantor’s obligations to the Finance Parties rights under [the Guarantee][the Finance
Documents] are secured equally and ratably with (or, if the obligation or liability to be
secured by such Lien is subordinated in right of payment to the Guarantor’s obligations
under [the Guarantee][the Finance Documents], prior to) the obligation or liability secured
by such Lien.”
(Quoted from a “Pledge Agreement”)

This lengthy sentence reflects one of the most typical features of legal instruments, the use of long
sentences with phrases alternated with phrases to have the drafter’s ideas fully covered, and the
more frequently I coped with them, the more substantially my reading comprehension and
analytical skills improved as a result.

It cannot be argued that my translation skills and other skills relating thereto grew parallel to each
other in my two years’ time at my first law firm. This period also brought me practical and
invaluable experience in legal translation that I would never get from my university’s translation
training. In other words, my first law firm was where I grew up into a good and professional legal
translator with sufficient skills and qualities that a legal translator needs to achieve success in legal
industry. These were also what I brought with me to my second and also my current law firm, a
global-scale UK law company with an enviable reputation built up from 80 years of history, and

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there is no doubt that I could not be admitted to my current firm in late 2013 where I am enjoying a
satisfactory salary and amazing benefits without my past experience of this type of work.

To make a brief summary of my story, I have been growing into my new role as a professional legal
translator over three years working in the field even though legal translation was of no interest to
me at all before I received my teacher’s call that day. With merely three years of experience, I dare
not say I am a translator of distinction for the time being, compared to other experienced and skilled
legal translators I met. Nonetheless, I have been trying my best to get my work done to the
satisfaction of both the firm and clients and the fact that I have outperformed my superior at the
present firm demonstrates how hard I have tried to survive legal translation over such three years.
Furthermore, as an employee with an enquiring mind, I have never stopped learning to be more and
more confident and professional in the position I am holding.

THE STORY OF TRANSLATOR 1

Educational Background

As briefly introduced in Chapter Three, Translator 1 (T1) was an English major at Ho Chi Minh
City University of Social Sciences and Humanities (HCMUSSH) from 1995 to 1999. This
institution, known as one of the two biggest institutions in the field of social sciences and
humanities in Vietnam, is a pioneer in offering new academic programs to meet societal demands
and English Linguistics and Literature is one of its primary training programs. Also in this period,
1995 - 2000, he was a student majoring in International Business at the Foreign Trade University
(the FTU), another local leading institution of higher education providing multidisciplinary courses
in economics, business and foreign languages. He decided to earn his third degree in Law at Ho Chi
Minh City University of Law (HCMULAW) in 2004 to become a professional lawyer. He
graduated from HCMULAW in 2008 with a certificate of merit, and possessing three Bachelor
Degrees in his twenties was undoubtedly his notable educational achievement.

A Professional Legal Translator

T1 commenced his translation career in 1998 as a part-time employee at an import-export company

with one of his main duties being translating documents and contracts. He had worked there for 2
years before working for a Vietnamese export and import bank as a full-time translator and
interpreter in 2000 when he first acquainted himself with banking translation. He continued looking
for other job opportunities to acquire knowledge of other areas in subsequent years from 2000 to
2007 at big foreign companies where he learned new knowledge of logistics services and marine

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and fire insurance, and, more to the point, translation was never excluded from his main tasks. He
chose legal translation as his professional career since 2007 to date, and, with a wide knowledge of
various fields, he is such an excellent legal translator that has given a highly creditable performance
at his current firm. He is now working as an attorney at law and also the chief translator at an
international French law firm where his main duties are translating legal documents from English
into Vietnamese and vice versa as well as doing legal search and helping Vietnamese and foreign
lawyers in preparing legal instruments and answers to clients’ questions relating to legal issues.
Given his biggest strength, he believes his vast knowledge of and practical working experience in a
variety of fields makes him a skilled and highly competitive legal translator as he is today; however,
he also admitted that he cannot work effectively after normal working hours and it is hard to force
him to work overtime as well. Though he deems this his biggest weakness, he refuses to change his
working principle and he is feeling satisfied with his current workload with no overtime working
required.

During his employment at such French law firm since 2009, T1 has dealt with different kinds of
legal documents relevant to a number of such practice areas as corporate, banking and finance,
labour, real estate, manufacturing and services and even though he is a translator of distinction, he
used to experience certain difficulties and problems that almost all legal translators could face, e.g.
lack of background knowledge of a particular field and terminologies. The following story told by
him in our interview is an illustrative example of the said problems:

I was asked to translate a 120-page technical document in the mining sector. I had a look at it
and said that it was difficult to translate as this was a paper about the mining process which
contained a lot of technical terms. I discussed with a lawyer in charge of the file that we could
request the client to ask their engineers to do it and we would correct the English version or to
engage a translation company to do it. Unfortunately, the client did not have good English-
speaking engineers and want to keep confidential of the document. Therefore, I had to be in
charge of the translation with support by other junior lawyers and I was responsible to
combine and review translated parts of other junior lawyers. This document was a real
challenge to me. I had to do a lot of research in the Internet and discussed with the client.
There were some parts in the document I did not understand and translated them word by
word and sent them to the client for checking. Finally I finished the document. The client was
an Asian company so their English was not so good. I did not know whether my translated
document was satisfactory or not. I assumed that no adverse response on the translated

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 document meant everything was good. I have a good experience in this case that if I try my
best to do something deemed impossible, I will achieve a result which may be not
satisfactory. However, I like the phrase “better than nothing.”
Translator 1, Transcript, September, 2014

The presented example partially reveals real challenges facing legal translators at all times.
Working as legal translators, it is inevitable for us to translate a document of a completely strange
area that we have never experienced before. As shown through the example, T1 had to handle a
document in mining sector while he is only familiar with other practice areas as listed above, which
means he hardly had any knowledge about the document he was coping with at the time and what
he could do was trying his best to complete such a tough task, whereas the quality of the translated
document was not guaranteed. It was obvious that lacking background knowledge of mining
industry and of mining terminologies in both English and Vietnamese really caused T1 intractable
problems when his wide range of knowledge became useless. The point is he cannot get rid of those
repetitive problems as long as he works in the field, and the only solution is to keep learning new
knowledge and improving himself as what he has been doing since the date he chose to became a
professional legal translator.

THE STORY OF TRANSLATOR 2

Educational Background

Translator 2 (T2) started her student life as an English major in 2005 at the Industrial University of
Ho Chi Minh City (the IUH) and graduated from the IUH in 2009 with English Translation and
Interpretation as her main major. She took a degree in Law at HCMULAW on the same year and
finished the course in 2013. Now she is attending the Legal Practice Course at HCMC Judicial
Academy as a requisite requirement for those who want to become lawyers in accordance with the
Vietnamese laws. Four years younger than me, T2 owns two Bachelor Degrees though and will
soon become an attorney at law with more opportunities to move farther in her professional career.

A Professional Legal Translator

As same as me and T1, T2 began her translation career when she was still an undergraduate. She
worked as a part-time translator for a Vietnamese law firm since 2007 to 2009 and was then
promoted to a higher position, Senior Translator, at the same firm in 2010 and continued holding
this position till December 2010. Interestingly, her first law firm is also my first law firm as
mentioned in my story but she already left when I joined it in 2011. It seemed she made a wise

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career choice when opting to leave such Vietnamese firm as it helped open a way to her current
working place, a prestigious international U.S law firm with offices located worldwide and also
being considered one of the largest foreign law firms operating in Vietnam for over 20 years with
more than 100 employees. Joining her U.S law firm since 2011, she is currently a legal translator-
cum-paralegal whose main duties entail translating legal documents of various kinds; being an
interpreter on request; reviewing translated documents provided by clients; meeting with clients
upon emergence of any controversies over a particular translated document; drafting a number of
legal instruments such as power of attorney, service agreements, loan agreements, and so on, on a
case-by-case basis; summarising legal documents newly issued by the Vietnamese Government or
by any governmental authorities; and working with practice groups in the firm in collecting
comments on newly issued laws/decrees/circulars. It is such wide range of tasks that has helped
sharpen her translation and other necessary skills over time, thanks to which she has been more and
more highly rated by her present colleagues and the firm’s partners. Apart from her full-time job,
she has been a freelance translator for certain entities since 2008 up to this time and has been
involved in different projects of both small and large scale. Apparently, she has devoted herself to
her translation career and she has earned a lot of knowledge and skills in return. Nonetheless, she
honestly shared with me in our interview that she will work much less when she plans to get
married and have kids. In terms of strengths and weaknesses, T2 asserted that her biggest strength
lies in her 7-year experience in legal translation together with her background knowledge of legal
industry gained from the course at HCMULAW whereas her most significant weakness lies in her
physical health so she cannot handle a large amount of work at once.

No matter how experienced and professional she is as a legal translator, T2 still ran into difficulties
inherent in this type of work during the course of her employment at her current firm. In particular,
she has had to work to tight deadlines very frequently at the firm’s request or struggled to translate
a document with specialized terminologies or ambiguously worded paragraphs caused by the
drafter’s repeated use of the same words/terms with different meanings. Once asked to give
illustrations of the problems as above mentioned, T2 recalled a story as detailed below:

A month ago I was assigned to translate a 27-page Guarantee from English into Vietnamese.
This document was prepared in relation to a term loan facility granted by a Bank to a Joint
Stock Company and as I rarely address such kind of document, it took me a few days to finish
the translation thereof since I had to do an extensive search on the Internet for sections that
were hard to understand thoroughly. This document is really a fair reflection of the so-called

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 ‘ambiguously worded paragraph’ frequently used in legal instruments. Given paragraphs with
ambiguous wording, there is one in a Section titled ‘Guarantee and Indemnity’ where the
pronoun ‘it’ is used repeatedly but referring to different subjects:

“The Guarantor irrevocably and unconditionally agrees with the Agent and each
Lender that if any obligation guaranteed by it is or becomes unenforceable, invalid or
illegal, it will, as an independent and primary obligation indemnify the Agent and/or
each Lenders immediately and on demand against any cost, loss or liability it incurs as
a result of the Borrower not paying any amount which would, but for such
unenforceability, invalidity or illegality, have been payable by it under any Finance
Document on the date and by the time when it would have been due. The amount
payable by the Guarantor under this indemnity will not exceed the amount it would have
had to pay under this Clause if the amount claimed had been recoverable on the basis
of a guarantee.”
(Quoted from a “Guarantee”)

When I read the paragraph for the first time, I could not get its precise meaning right away
so I read it again and again with intense concentration on the pronoun ‘it,’ which is applied
six times, to identify the right subject to which the pronoun refers whenever it appears as I
knew whether this paragraph will be accurately translated depends mainly on how to
interpret such pronoun. Eventually, I succeeded in matching each ‘it’ with its appropriate
subject after 30 minutes reading extensively and carefully studying the paragraph and I was
quite sure about my interpretation. In fact, this pronoun refers to four totally different
subjects. Concretely, the first two ‘it’ refer to the Guarantor; the third ‘it’ refers to the
Agent and/or each Lender; the fourth ‘it’ refers to the Borrower; the fifth ‘it’ refers to the
unpaid amount of money; and the sixth ‘it’ refers back to the Guarantor.
Translator 2, Transcript, September, 2014

It is true that T2 is a skilled and experienced legal translator but still encountering new challenges
every working day. The better she deals with them, the more competent and professional she
becomes and to be a chief legal translator as well as an attorney at law is an ultimate goal she is
attempting to achieve in 4 or 5 years’ time from now.

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 THE STORY OF TRANSLATOR 3

Educational Background

Translator 3 (T3) was admitted to the Faculty of Foreign Languages at Ton Duc Thang University
(TDTU) in 2001, majoring in English Language Pedagogy as he wished to be an English teacher
upon graduation at the time. Known as one of the fastest developing higher education institutions in
Vietnam, TDTU has offered both local training and international collaborative programs with its
students being ranked among the best students in HCMC and in Vietnam. Learning to be a teacher,
T3 was taught teaching methodologies for much of his 4-year course, but, in the meantime,
translation was also included in the entire training program as a compulsory subject to equip
students of English major with basic translation skills and knowledge. He graduated from TDTU in
2005 and went into teaching right after that to practice what he learned from TDTU with no
intention of being a translator, let alone a legal translator as he is today.

A Professional Legal Translator

T3 had been in English teaching for three years before pursuing a professional career in legal
translation since 2007, which turned out to be a successful career advancement that he had built.
Upon hearing such change of career, I was curious as to why he left teaching profession so I raised
the question and he gave me a clear answer. After three years teaching English at English centres
with students from diverse backgrounds, he found teaching inappropriate for a man like him who is
not creative enough to diversify his teaching methods and, more to the point, he failed to attract
students coming to his class while this was a requirement imposed on every teacher by the centre
where he was teaching back then. That was when he decided to make a career move and legal
translation came to him unexpectedly as a fate from which he could not escape. He joined his first
and also his current law firm since 2007 up to now and his excellent performance thereat has earned
him recognition as a translator of distinction. As regards T3’s present working place, it has won
renown as one of the largest and most successful law firms founded in Vietnam and has been
ranked among the 1st tier law firms by Legal 500, Chambers and IFLR1000 in most of major
practice areas for many consecutive years. From an English teacher with no translation experience
in his early stages, he is now a skilled and experienced legal translator with seven years working in
legal industry and concurrently a treasure of his firm who has significantly contributed to the firm’s
long-term success. Concerning his plus and minus points, he was definite that his high translation
speed, 20 – 30 pages per day, has helped distinguished himself from other legal translators and

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made him more competitive. Still, what has made him less confident is the lack of background
knowledge of other areas that he may involve sometimes such as insurance, energy, tax, and so on.

With respect to difficulties and problems T3 has experienced in doing his job so far, strict
deadlines/deadline overlap and limited knowledge of other business sectors have given him a lot of
trouble sometimes. To illustrate his point, he told me a story about tight and overlapped deadlines
and how such problem was solved in the end:

As my firm is led by a group of Partners with each in charge of a particular practice area, I
have to work for all of them whenever the need arises, in which case deadline overlap will
become unavoidable. That really happened one day a year ago when two Partners assigned me
two different translation tasks and asked me to revert to them on the same day few days later.
Both the documents are long and difficult to deal with but I was given 2 days only to finish
them all. This task could be regarded as mission impossible and there was no possibility that I
could complete the task within the specified period so I talked to the two Partners about my
difficult situation and waited for their further instructions before proceeding with the task.
The Partners then talked to each other regarding the priority of the document and one of them
told me what to do after they mutually agreed on which task should be done first and which
could be done later. I worked more effectively then with the help of the Partners in addressing
the problem and one of the best things at my firm is that all problems will be amicably settled
by the Partners.
Translator 3, Transcript, September, 2014

Every legal translator has their own problems and difficulties and T3 is no exception as evidenced
above. It is the way he copes with them that counts and he has really ameliorated tense situations in
his own way. This can be seen through his outstanding performance at the current firm and it is
undoubtedly that his strong attachment to the firm will keep him there in the long run.

Conclusion

Definitely, my own stories and those of the other three legal translators as above unfolded do not
paint the complete picture of the so-called ‘legal translation’, but rather giving a brief glimpse of
the field through which the readers hereof can imagine how legal translators like us do their job
with clearly visible problems and challenges. As a researcher and also a legal translator, I wish to
have access to professional life of other legal translators to learn more about their experiences as

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well as to figure out whether my counterparts have lived their professional life and felt it as same as
I have. Those stories, by and large, partially offer me what I am looking for, and my ultimate goal
when conducting this study is to let experiences of legal translators come to knowledge of as many
people as possible.

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