Three things a firm needs from a translation supplier and rarely gets: consistency across a matter, a confidentiality regime that survives diligence, and a straight answer about whether Monday is possible. Everything below is what we do now, not what we intend to build.
What makes legal translation different
It is not general translation with legal vocabulary. A defined term must stay bound to its definition across forty occurrences; shall, will and may are obligation, expectation and permission and not stylistic variants; a citation is an address that must still resolve; and a procedural term — Klageschrift, atto di citazione, dava dilekçesi — rendered by its nearest English cousin tells a court something about the foreign procedure that is not true. How we handle agreements · how we handle filings.
Consistency across a matter
The problem a firm has that an individual does not: twelve documents in one matter, translated over three months, that must agree with each other. A term rendered one way in the contract and another way in the pleading is a question from the other side.
Send your glossary, your house terminology, or an earlier translation of a related document and it is followed throughout. Where no glossary exists we build one for the matter as we go and send it to you — it is yours, and it governs everything we do for you afterwards. Party names, defined terms, institutional names and citation formats are held constant across every document in the matter, whoever translates it.
Confidentiality that survives diligence
EnLatin holds ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification for information security management (TÜV NORD, certificate No. 44121231258) — audited, and checkable in the certifier’s own database. Files travel encrypted and are stored encrypted; access is limited to the specialist and reviser assigned to the matter, both under non-disclosure; nothing is subcontracted to an unknown hand.
Send us your own paper. Your firm’s NDA, your client’s confidentiality undertaking, a GDPR data processing agreement on your template — send it and we will sign it before any file is transferred. We do not require you to accept ours instead.
Documents are deleted 45 days after delivery, or earlier at your request, or held longer where you have contracted for it. Only the order record remains — what was translated, when, and the verification code — which is what lets a translation be verified years later when the files are gone.
Three readers, and one of them signs
Every certified translation is rendered by a credentialed specialist, checked line by line against the source by a second linguist, and certified by a senior philologist who confirms the form the receiving authority requires. ISO 17100:2015 (TÜV SÜD, certificate No. 9931000357) requires the second reader; the third is ours. The certification names the philologist who performed the work — not a company, a person, accountable for it.
A translation the other side can check
Each order carries a code in the form EL-260722-1206-a1b2c3d4, printed on the delivered document. Opposing counsel, a court clerk or a registry can enter it at our verification page and confirm the order exists, its language pair, page count and delivery date — without contacting us and without involving you. Every lookup is logged with a timestamp.
This is the practical difference between a certification that must be believed and one that can be tested. For a document going into a file where authenticity may be questioned, it is worth more than any badge.
Deadlines, answered straight
A hearing date does not move because a translation was late. Tell us the date when you send the papers and you will get an honest answer before you commit — including, where it applies, that the date cannot be met. Most filings are delivered within a day; a long evidentiary bundle or a jurisdiction requiring a court-registered sworn translator is quoted individually.
If we miss a deadline we have accepted, you hear immediately, with the cause named, and the choice is yours: let us finish to a new time we can meet, or take a full refund at once with no deduction for work done. Full delivery terms.
How a matter actually runs
No portal to learn and no procurement exercise. Write to us with the documents, the matter reference you want them tracked under, and the deadline. We confirm scope, certification level and price before anything begins.
Purchase orders, references on invoices, and invoicing in arrears for established matters are all normal and available — tell us what your accounts department needs and it is accommodated. Standard orders are placed and paid through the order page like any other client’s.
Where a filing needs a sworn translator registered with a particular court, or an apostille on an original, we say so before you order rather than after. We do not issue apostilles, and nobody in translation does.
Pricing
Certified translation is priced per page at the rate for the document type, confirmed before any charge. Volume discounts apply automatically — 5% from three pages, rising to 25% at seven or more — which is most bundles once annexes are counted. Uncertified translation for internal review or negotiation is priced per word.
For recurring work, write to us. Rates for continuing instruction are agreed in conversation, as they are everywhere in this profession, and we would rather discuss a real matter than publish a tier nobody fits.
What we will not do
- We do not advise on strategy, and we do not summarize. A long document is translated in full; a translator deciding what matters has begun making your case, without a licence to do it.
- We do not smooth a document toward your interest. What is unhelpful is rendered as carefully as what helps, because a translation adjusted toward an outcome stops being evidence the moment the other side compares it with the original.
- We do not run legal material through a machine at any stage. Machine output on legal prose is fluent, plausible, and wrong in ways that survive review.
Write to our desk
Send the documents, the matter reference and the date. A person answers, usually within the hour. salve@enlatin.net