E-ging Solutions is a world-leading Shanghai translation company with specialties in legal translation.

       If you are a legal translator,then the following scenario should sound familiar. Your stressed-out lawyer client hires you on short notice to translate a complex legal document under a tight deadline. As the deadline approaches, you scurry to complete your proofreading while facing a barrage of e-mails and calls from your client’s neurotic legal assistant. You begin to surmise that several high-priced professionals,with their meters running, are waiting around for your work. You manage to deliver the final product,but moments later get a nasty pit in your stomach. What if a mistake was missed in the translation? What if the client’s own client makes a costly,and incorrect, decision based on that mistake? Will you be held liable for all of the problems arising from that one error? Your anxiety will undoubtedly grow as you recall that the client is a lawyer, whose basic tool of the trade is also language and whose very livelihood probably consists of enforcing claims against people who make mistakes.
　　What follows will describe very broadly the general legal framework for translator liability in situations like the one I just described. It will also offer a brief explanation of how the law itself provides translators with some protection against such liability. Please note that this article does not purport to be, and should not be relied upon as, legal advice.
　　First Semester of Law School Any translator liability would be based on a theory of contract law and/or tort law, areas typically covered in the first semester of law school. A tort is a private or civil wrong arising from a violation of a legal duty recognized by law. It serves as the grounds for a lawsuit. The primary aim of tort law is to provide relief for the injury or damages caused by one person to another and to deter others from committing such harms.
　　So, for instance, if the translator and the client have a direct contract with each other (like the translator and lawyer in the scenario at the beginning of this article), then the client would likely assert a claim against the translator based on the terms of that contract in the event he or she suffers a loss from that translation mistake. If the injured person is not a client and does not have a contract with the translator but is nevertheless harmed by the translation mistake (perhaps the lawyer’s client in our scenario), then that injured third party could assert a claim against the translator based on the theory of tort law
　　The basic rule under contract law is that if the translator and the client have formed a binding translation contract and the translator fails to perform that contract in accordance with the contract’s terms and conditions (i.e., if he or she “breaches” the contract), then the client may demand that the translator pay compensation for any damages that the client incurred due to that breach.