Certified Translation Company
Every translation of a document filed in court must be certified.
The failure to use a certified translation could jeopardize the admissibility of the document for use in evidence whether you are in a federal or local court.
Federal law requires courtroom interpreters to be “certified”* but that does not mean they have to have type of certification or level of qualification. Rather, the “Civil Filing Requirements,” merely states that “documents not written in English must be accompanied by a translation, unless a waiver has been granted by the Court.”
Certification of written documents has arisen as a matter of custom and good practice in the litigation translation industry. The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit refused to reverse an immigration appeals judge who ordered a person to be deported because the affidavit she submitted was “unaccompanied by a certificate of translation.”**
For a translation of a written document to be certified, it must contain a sworn, notarized statement attesting to the completeness and accuracy of the translation. Best practices in the industry require using only translators who have been certified by the American Translators Association and who are native speakers and writers of target language’s country, region and dialect and who have experience in the underlying subject matter of the translation. Translations that are certified are referred to as “certified translations” or translations with “certificates of accuracy.”
State Specific Rules
The Florida Supreme Court has implemented a program that requires for some languages, interpreters of courtroom and deposition testimony to become certified. The “Court Interpreter Certification and Regulation Program” applies to the following languages: Arabic, Cantonese, French, Haitian Creole, Hmong, Ilocano, Khmer, Korean, Laotian, Mandarin, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Somali, Spanish, Tagalog and Vietnamese.
Law firms should seek a translation service that follows the industry’s best practices. Partnering with a translation firm that provides notarized ATA certifications for all written translations will help ensure a problem-free legal review process. Having a translator that is qualified and certified by the OSCA court interpreter program will also add a level of integrity to any certification.
* (see, “Court Interpreter’s Act,” 28 U.S.C. section 1827)
**See Villalobos v. U.S. Atty. Gen., 479 F. App’x 966, 967 (11th Cir. 2012).