One of the most critical translation services one is likely to provide is for the legal profession and is primarily with regard to translating documents that will be relied upon in court.
One of the most important of these will be witness statements. After all, someone who has borne witness to an accident or a crime needs to give a statement to the police to describe truthfully to the best of their knowledge what they saw happening.
A dilemma that can occur, of course, is when someone who witnesses a crime does not speak a language native to the criminal justice system of the country they are in, whether because they are visiting the country or are learning the language but do not feel comfortable using it to make such an important statement of facts.
There is provision, found in Practice Direction 32, paragraph 23.2 for witness statements to be made in a foreign language.
However, there are strict rules surrounding their use. They must be translated, and both the translation and the original language statement must be submitted to the court as well.
The translator must also sign this translated statement and clearly certify that the translation is accurate to the original statement.
There were other approaches used in the past, most notably using Practice Direction 22, paragraph 3.1 which relies on a “statement of truth” signed by an authorised person, allowed in cases where someone is unable to read or sign such a statement.
In some cases, this is used by solicitors who either speak the first language of the witness or use an interpreter to prepare a statement in English and get the witness to sign it.
Typically PD32 is more likely to be used as an approach, however, which means that a translator would be potentially liable for contempt of court in the event that a mistranslation ended up distorting the facts of the statement.