We have translated many EU legislative instruments for harmonisation of the Ukrainian and European Union laws. We are the ones entrusted with translation of many high-profile decisions of international courts (we cannot divulge more details due to our non-disclosure obligations).
Legal translation is one of the most demanded types of translation as it covers any legal relations, e.g. commercial, civil, administrative, taxation, and international law; the scope is incredibly wide!
We will translate your legal documents as promptly as possible. Our company takes even the most challenging legal translation projects and invariably provides high quality services.
The legal documents we work with include the following:
Even if the translator is fluent in the requested language pair and perfectly understands the national specifics but is not well versed in legal terminology, he or she will have a great difficulty coping with the task. Without a real experience in legal translation, grasping all the complexities and ambiguities of the legal parlance would be an insurmountable task. It is precisely the lack of practical skills and experience that begets incompetent translations.
Legal terminology and style require extra care even from those who are knowledgeable about law. To someone with no legal background, the industry jargon and vernacular will be unintelligible. General-purpose dictionaries will not be sufficient for most legal documents. Our translators benefit from our extensive library of reference materials and industry literature.
As a provider of professional legal translation services, we will be happy to answer any question or inquiry you may have regarding legal translations, our services, and our fees. Just as with technical translation, in Ukraine, there are no standards established and shared by providers of legal translation services. Customers may, therefore, struggle to find the best solutions for their legal translation needs.
In the EU and most developed countries, translation price is calculated by the cost per word of translation. This is a clear, simple and transparent way of estimating the cost, which rules out any kind of manipulation.
Translation project fees in the EU and other developed countries are generally based on the per-word pricing model. This is the most common and convenient way to calculate translation project fees. At Profpereklad, we too apply the per-word pricing model—as the most consumer-friendly approach.
Translation agencies in Ukraine and other former Soviet Union republics, in addition to the European per-word pricing standards, continue calculating their fees based on the average character counts per standard page—the remnant of the manual typewriter era. Many Kyiv-based translation agencies use the character count in the document as the basis for calculating their per-page fees. The problem, however, is that the translation agencies do not adhere to the same standard page metrics, which may differ from 1,000 to 2,000 characters per page. As you can see, the difference is essential.
Another point of contention is whether to take the source or target texts as the basis for the translation fee calculation. This means that you will know the final price of your translation project only after the translation has been completed. Basically, you may be in for a big-time, and rather unpleasant, surprise.
And, as if that’s not enough, translation providers further disagree on whether to count spaces in the final character count. The lack of clear and consistent national translation standards has, at times, led to unsavory disputes between agencies and clients: There have been cases when customers reportedly refused to pay the price based on the count that included spaces. In retaliation, the translation providers decided to teach them a lesson by delivering the target documents without spaces.
Needless to say, not everybody laughed at the joke. If anything, the lesson here is that both customers and providers would greatly benefit from clear and consistent price guidelines. If, when signing up for a project, a translation agency has failed to properly communicate their price policy to the customers or has deliberately misled them, such agency risks losing its right to seek any redress afterwards and, what’s worse, may risk the reputation of the entire industry.
Therefore, to our customers, we are happy to offer the straightforward and transparent option of calculating the translation fee based on the total wordcount of source documents. If you choose to collaborate with us, we promise professionalism, clear and consistent terms of collaboration, great quality in translation and customer service.
