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Frequently Asked Questions

A professional trained in the subject matter of your translation is always a good idea. However, law is different from most other disciplines, for instance medicine. Although a medical translator needs to know what a patella is in order to find the right term in the target language, the human body is the same everywhere. However, law norms are stronly influenced by cultural norms and no two countries in the world have identical legal systems. In fact, some countries have very, very different legal systems (see next question). A lawyer who is thoroughly familiar with both the common law system and the civil law system can appreciate nuances that even the best professional translators will miss. In addition, a lawyer can be creative in seeking functional equivalents when an institution of one legal system does not exist in the other.
The countries that use English as their official language (such as the UK, USA and Australia) have a different legal system called “common law”. Most European countries, including Greece, follow the civil law system. There are substantial differences between the two legal systems and many institutions of one system do not even exist in the other.

English and Greek.

As a former attorney, I’m accustomed to working with confidential materials and take all reasonable measures to ensure that they remain confidential. I’m also happy to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement, if requested.

Apart from my background and experience, my translation process ensures that all my translations are top quality. 

It depends on the document attributes (length, complexity, repetitions) and my availability. I will confirm the delivery date before taking on a project.

My rates depend on complexity, length and urgency. My rates are typical of experienced lawyer-linguists and somewhat lower than translation agencies specialising in legal translations.

You can contact me to request a free quote.

PayPal (preferred) and bank transfer.
Translators charge by source word. As a ballpark figure, a single-spaced page in a font suitable for reading has about 500 words.
Most of the source documents I translate are in Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx). I can also work with Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) documents, Microsoft Excel (.xls) and other types. Surcharges may apply in case of documents with complex formatting or limited legibility (e.g. scanned documents).

Yes and yes.

Very rarely. At the moment machine translation in my language combination is of rather little use to legal translators. 

Although the main bulk of my work is legal, I enjoy the variety of other disciplines that I am familiar with, including information technology, business, e-commerce and marketing. I only take on projects that I know I can complete to a very high standard.

I offer consecutive interpretation services depending on my availability. Contact me for more information.

It depends. If your project is large and urgent, a translation agency will probably deliver faster because it can break up the project and assign different parts to different translators. A good translation agency will perform a quality check before delivery to ensure consistency throughout the project.

If you are looking for top quality, you are probably better off using the services of an experienced freelance translator.