John Rynne Nov 6, 2019:

Working with authors is one thing The case of the German law book is a wonderful example of the added value that translators can contribute.
However, translating a contract that your client has to sign and be bound by, and making it beautiful without making your client aware of the imperfections/holes in the original, is irresponsible.

Adrian MM. Nov 6, 2019:

'Translations that surpass the original' Some translators advertise 'translations that are superior to the original'. In one case, the authors of a 2-volume comparative law book (German-into-English) actually thanked the translator for producing a translation that 'surpassed the source text at many turns' (Zweigert & Kötz congratulating the late Scots-born (another Celtic genius) Prof. of tort law, Tony Weir).

John Rynne Nov 6, 2019:

Copy/paste Adrian, I agree that askers sometimes mistype their problem texts, rather than doing copy/paste. I maintain my point, however. A translator should not deliver a beautiful coherent translation of an original that is inconsistent/incoherent, unless the client is forewarned and says that that is what they want.
A related problem that I have experienced is where the translator does not understand the source text but delivers a beautifully written translation that differs in meaning from the source -- a "whited sepulchre", so to speak.

Adrian MM. Nov 6, 2019:

'Crappy English' Yes, John, but we need (to) be sure that the asker - her good(-)self has not inadvertently omitted the ending of 's from landlord. Otherwise, use of the word counterpart suggests a native English (?) legal professional drafter, though 'in my conveyancing departmental day' approval would have been called a 'licence' (to assign) vs. a consent to subletting.

John Rynne Nov 6, 2019:

Crappy English The English is lousy (e.g. "without the landlord written approval" - should be "landlord's") so there may even be text missing from that sentence. If the text were well written and coherent throughout, it would make sense to work hard to interpret the writer's intent. However, in this case, if you produce a coherent translation from an incoherent original, you may actually be misleading your client. For example, if the contract is to be signed in English, and subject to an English-speaking jurisdiction, providing a nice, clear translation into Spanish means your client is unaware that the contract they are signing is crap.

Daniel Coria Nov 5, 2019:

Hola, Bernardette. Creo que es un error y deberia decir "to anyone", o faltaría al menos una palabra entre "any" y "without", sin duda.