Legal Translation Services

Prism Language Solutions provides legal translation for law firms, in-house counsel and courts: foreign judgments for recognition and enforcement, contracts and corporate records for transactions, foreign-language discovery, and affidavits and witness statements for filing. Every translation for litigation comes with a translator declaration that states the translator’s qualifications and certifies accuracy, worded for Rule 901 authentication in federal court and state provisions such as New York CPLR 2101(b). The work is done by translators trained in law and reviewed by a second linguist.

Last reviewed September 11, 2026 by Sarah J, Prism Language Solutions

• Certified translations prepared to meet USCIS requirements
• Human linguists only, matched to the subject
• Fixed written quote within 60 minutes in business hours
• One office in New York, linguists in every state

Contract Translation for Attorneys

Transactional work is the largest part of our legal translation: share purchase and asset purchase agreements, distribution and licensing agreements, employment contracts, leases, articles of incorporation, bylaws, board minutes and powers of attorney. The recurring difficulty is that legal systems do not share concepts. A civil-law contract from Brazil or Germany uses terms with no exact common-law equivalent, and the translator has to decide between the nearest English term and a literal rendering with a note. We prefer the note. Counsel can read a literal rendering and decide what it means under the governing law; counsel cannot un-read a confident but wrong equivalence.

For transactions we translate in either direction and keep a matter glossary, so the defined terms in the English draft match the ones in the Spanish or Chinese execution version. Bilingual execution copies are laid out side by side on request. See also power of attorney translation.

Foreign Judgment Translation for US Courts

Recognition and enforcement proceedings, custody and support matters, and probate all turn on a foreign court’s own words. A judgment or decree is translated in full, with the court’s seals, docket stamps, marginal notes and any certificate of finality rendered or described, because the parts a lay reader skips are the parts a judge looks for. Where a decree has been apostilled for use in the United States, the apostille is translated with it; see apostille translation.

The register matters. A Polish family-court decree and a Mexican commercial judgment are written in formal court language, and the English should read like a judgment, not like a summary of one. Our translators for this work are trained in law and native in English, and the translation is delivered with a signed declaration so it can be filed as an exhibit without further steps. The most common single document is the foreign divorce decree, usually for a remarriage, an immigration filing or a support enforcement action.

Discovery Document Translation

Foreign-language discovery is a volume problem with a precision problem inside it. Ten thousand emails in Korean or Portuguese cannot all be translated at the litigation rate, and they do not need to be. The workflow we run with firms is triage first: a bilingual reviewer or a first-pass machine translation, used only to identify what is relevant, followed by full human translation of the documents that will be produced, cited or shown to a witness. Only the human translations are certified, and the declaration says which documents it covers.

Privilege review across languages is the trap. A document that looks like a routine business email can carry legal advice in a way the triage tool does not recognize, so we flag anything that mentions counsel, and the firm decides. Chat exports and messaging apps are translated in thread order with sender, timestamp and any emoji or slang noted, since those often carry the meaning a court cares about.

Affidavit Translation and Translator Declarations

Two different documents get called an affidavit translation. The first is a witness statement written in another language that must be filed in English. We translate it in full and attach a translator declaration; in New York, CPLR 2101(b) requires an English translation together with an affidavit by the translator setting out their qualifications and stating that the translation is accurate, and a single line asserting fluency is a weak way to meet that. Our declaration sets out education, years of practice and relevant certification, and is notarized when the court requires an affidavit rather than a declaration.

The second is the translator’s own statement about a translation. In federal court an unsworn declaration under 28 U.S.C. 1746, made under penalty of perjury, generally does the work of an affidavit, and that is the form we supply by default. Where a case turns on one clause, we can add a short reasoned note explaining the rendering chosen and the alternatives considered, which is far more useful to a judge than a bare certificate.

How Courts Treat Translated Exhibits

There is no federal rule that says how a translated document must be certified. Rule 901 of the Federal Rules of Evidence requires evidence sufficient to support a finding that the exhibit is what its proponent claims, and for a translation that is met in practice by a declaration from a qualified translator describing their qualifications and affirming accuracy. Rule 604 separately requires an interpreter to be qualified and to swear to translate truly, which is why the translator who prepared an exhibit is sometimes asked to be available as a witness. State rules vary in detail but converge on the same point: named translator, stated qualifications, sworn or declared accuracy.

Opposing parties can and do challenge translations. The defense is a translation that is complete, a translator who exists and can explain their choices, and a declaration that was accurate when signed. We keep the translator’s working notes on litigation matters so that, if a rendering is questioned a year later, the reasoning is still there.

Legal Translator Qualifications

Legal translation is done by translators with legal training or long legal practice: law graduates who translate, former paralegals, and translators who have worked inside firms in the source-language jurisdiction. They translate into their native language only, and a second legal linguist reviews every document against the source before it is certified. Individual translators may hold ATA certification or state court interpreter credentials; the company itself is a private agency, not a court-appointed vendor. For a hearing in the same matter a court interpreter can be assigned from the same network; in federal district court the standard is the one set under the Court Interpreters Act, 28 U.S.C. 1827.

Pricing is per source word, in the legal band of about $0.14 to $0.20 for common languages and higher for rare ones, with discovery volumes quoted as a project; see pricing. Firms with recurring work get the same translator on their matters and a single glossary across them. More on how we work with firms on the law firms page.

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