Legal translation: Protecting your rights

Posted by Fahad Majid on March 24th, 2020

Human rights and freedoms are supported by most countries in the world, and not all human rights can be translated exactly and the same across all the countries in the world. You will find that most of this human right and freedom are written in English and French. The best way to make human rights more effective and able to protect as many people as possible is by translating them and enabling the locals to be able to understand the context.

When translating human rights there some factors you should consider

  1. Adopting cultural sensitivity

It's hard for people of different cultures to find common beliefs and traditions despite living in the same country. Imagine if people of a different culture in the same county can't have common grounds imagine all the different cultures all over the world. 

Universal human rights will apply to everyone despite their cultural background. So, the fact that being gender-sensitive doesn't mean some rights will not apply to some cultures just because they decided to live differently from the rest.

 On contrary to that, it means that by knowing this, you will be able to translate and phrase these rights in a way that it will suit them.

  1. Making sure the chosen words match the law

When translating human rights make sure the words you choose resonates the law in a way that you will be able to give the exact meaning of it.

 Some words after translation will give you every different meaning and will not be good in case there is a lawsuit. 

  1. Staying gender neutral

When translating, you will be using two different languages at this time. If you are not careful, you will find out some words will be gender discriminating making one gender not be able to be protected by the law.

When translating human rights it’s important to acknowledge different grammatical genders that can discriminate an entire group of persons from being able to get protection.

  1. Find the rights words with the right meaning

When translating one language to another, it is very difficult to get the exact word with the same meaning.

 In some cases, when translating a document, you will get two different words with the same meaning in one language but with a completely different meaning in the other language. 

Therefore, you need to be careful when translating these words.

5. Translators sometimes need to be cultural mediators

We can all agree it’s difficult to translate human rights. Yet it’s one of the important things to be done. Because it is important to make human rights universal. Therefore, while translating, translators are required to be mediators.

They will be able to close the gap between international and domestic frameworks. Mediators will be able to remove the cultural difference between the two parties by explaining the importance of one different culture to different peoples to the other party. While being able to create a universal link between the two.

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Fahad Majid

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Fahad Majid
Joined: May 28th, 2019
Articles Posted: 10

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