In recent years, sworn translations have assumed an increasingly important role as a result of the explosion in international trade and the increase in migration flows. This has led to a sharp increase in demand for this type of service.

The certification of a translation of a document is a certification procedure, by an official translator, through which legal value is attributed to the document. It is an essential process for the translation to be valid in the country in which it is to be used since with this procedure the translated document takes on the same value as the original document.

The official translator is a professional translation expert who translates legal documents. In Italy, it is preferable that the official translator is registered at Roll of Experts at the Court and prior to the Role of Experts at Chamber of Commerce in order to certify under oath that the translation is faithful to the original document. It is therefore a highly specialized translator who works in synergy with notaries or judges in every case of translation of important documents with legal value.

The main difficulty of legal translation lies in the difference and in some cases the absence, of legal concepts between the source and target languages, i.e. between the two different legal systems in question. Consequently, the main reason for the difficulty of legal translation is the untranslatability not of terms, but of concepts which are specific to some legal systems and not to others. In such situations, the legal translator must make important and highly responsible choices, including that of creating a special neologism in his own language or that of adopting existing conventions.

The procedures for certification and legalisation vary according to the document in question. It is the responsibility of the client to obtain information about the specific requirements from the requesting authorities regarding the need for a sworn translation or legalization or apostille.

Clients always have a lot of doubts about these procedures. Let’s try to understand the difference between the terms used. What does certified translation, sworn translation, apostille or legalization mean? In the next articles, we will discuss about it.