What exactly is meant by English-Portuguese Legal Translation?
While translation in general can be more nuanced than people think, a legal translation into Portuguese or from Portuguese is much more than just moving words from one language to another.
Legal translation is focused on a wide variety of documents such as wills, court and financial documents, declarations, patents or court decrees.
Legal translators of Portuguese must have a good knowledge of the legal system of the country from which the document originates. In order to avoid misleading translations, they must also have an extensive knowledge of both English law and the law that applies to Brazil, Portugal.
In a globalized world where companies from all over the world can do business, legal translation takes on a very important role. We would like to take this opportunity to remind you that not all legal translations need to be official (certified). Translations from or into Portuguese should only be officially certified when requested by an official institution, agency or department. So be sure to check if an official, certified or sworn translation is required in Brazil, Portugal, or if maybe a simple translation Portuguese<>English will do.
Portuguese Legal Translation differ from other types of translation
Legal documents in Portuguese, unlike other documents such as a general web site, have a specific terminology. Our Portuguese Legal Translators are able to correctly translate these concepts into English or Spanish. They do not simply replace one word for another.
The choice of certain words in a legal text has a very specific and precise meaning. On the other hand, any ambiguity or inaccuracy can invalidate a legally binding document. A small mistake could have significant financial and/or legal consequences.
Legal jargon of each country (UK, Brazil, Portugal…) is complex and its terminology can be very specific. Add to this the cultural and regional differences in territories where Portuguese is spoken, and you can understand how difficult legal translation can be.
Legal translators translate a legal concept from English into Portuguese or vice versa. To be legally binding, the English and the legal Portuguese terminology must be unambiguous.
Textual references for Portuguese Legal Translators
All legal translators of Portuguese turn to reference works to do their job. For example, specialized dictionaries and glossaries, codes, laws and legal doctrine, both in English and from countries like Brazil, Portugal.
Legal translators frequently check out civil and criminal procedure codes and regulatory rules. In these reference books they usually find precise descriptions in Portuguese and in English of each legal concept.
Referral sources help translators confirm that they are using the appropriate terms used in a given legal proceeding. The work of a legal Portuguese-English translator is very precise and painstaking. In addition to these specialised legal researches, Portuguese translators use computer aided translation tools like TM (Translation Memories) and Multilingual Term Bases. Translation Memories let them find pieces of text already translated by them or by other translators. Specific Portuguese Machine Translation engines are also used in combination with TM and have proven to be very useful.
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Where is Portuguese spoken?
Portuguese (português in Portuguese) is an official language in Portugal, Brazil, Mozambique, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, East Timor, Cape Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe. A total of 177 million people speak it, representing 3.2% of the world economy.
Other translation types from Portuguese
Legal translation in other languages
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A quick overview of the Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Western Romance language characterized by its nasalization, by the difficulty to distinguish the end and the beginning of words and by its complicated phonetics.
Brazilian Portuguese is set apart not only by accents and colloquial language, but also by its spelling and grammatical rules.
Portuguese is a Romance language spoken by about 220 million people, mainly in Portugal and Brazil, but also in Angola, Mozambique ( Moçambique), Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau (Guiné-Bissau), São Tomé and Príncipe, East Timor (Timor-Leste), Equatorial Guinea and Macao. There are also communities of Portuguese speakers in Goa, Daman and Diu in India, and in Malacca in Malaysia.
Portuguese comes from Latin, which was brought to the Iberian Peninsula by Roman soldiers, settlers and merchants from 218 BC. The first records of a clearly Portuguese language appear in administrative documents dating from the 9th century AD. In 1290 King Denis decreed that Portuguese, then simply called "the common language", should be known as the Portuguese language and should be used officially.
In 1916 Portugal adopted a reformed Portuguese spelling (nova ortografia), in which words were written more in accordance to their pronunciation. A slightly modified form was adopted in Brazil in 1943 and revised in 1970. In 2009, a new spelling was introduced in Brazil that aims to unify the written Portuguese of all Lusophone countries. The date for adoption in the other Portuguese-speaking countries has not yet been set.