Because of its official nature, the translation must comply with certain rules for certified translations in order to be recognised as a true translation:
1. Rules governing certified translations: confidentiality
The source document may contain highly sensitive confidential information to which non-disclosure rules apply. Project managers, translators and all other stakeholders are therefore required to use secure tools, guaranteeing total confidentiality in the exchange and submission of documents. At Legal 230, we are determined not to break the chain of confidentiality, and provide our customers with our secure Tier 3 portal.
The court-approved translation expert must not share the document with other contacts.
2. The translator's responsibility and ethics
The expert translator is required to carry out the translation work personally, without the help of another translator. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, sharing the task between several translators also poses problems in terms of confidentiality and the quality of the final output.
Similarly, court-approved translators are obliged to stamp and sign only those pages they have actually translated themselves. It is illegal and unethical to sign blank pages. The translator is solely and entirely responsible for the entire translation process.
Finally (and this can sometimes be surprising), as the court-appointed translator is obliged to faithfully reproduce and translate the content of the document in his or her translation, any errors, typos or misprints in the source must also appear uncorrected.
3. An independent expert
It is important that the court-approved translator works as an independent professional and is not an employee of the company requesting his or her services. The existence of a subordinate relationship is contrary to the rules of professional ethics. Translators also have a duty not to be influenced in the performance of their duties and not to modify the translation on request, and they must therefore remain totally impartial in their work.
Any court-approved translator must be appointed as an expert by one of France's courts of appeal in order for the document to be recognised by the French authorities. It should be noted that a translator's work is valid throughout France, irrespective of the particular court of appeal with which he or she is registered. For example, a document to be produced before a court in Paris may have been certified by an expert translator approved by the Court of Appeal in Caen or Douai.
Legal 230's court-approved translators translate your legal documents in compliance with these rules, guaranteeing a certified, high-quality result.
For further information, please contact us by telephone on +33 (0)1 84 80 21 20 or by e-mail at contact@legal230.com. Our team of experts will be delighted to answer your questions!