From opening a hole-in-wall type Baqala to working in a supermarket, getting legal translation services are a necessity in any Emirate. Coming to the need for developing marketing collateral or branding of your business, again, without accurate legal translations, you are risking a lot of time and finances.
Ministry of Economy in UAE has always been providing facilitation to support business activities. However, there are a number of documentation required for any business to fulfill compliance requirements. At times such documentation is available in English, but certified Arabic versions are also needed in most cases. In this blog, we try to look at some of the areas where translations are required and how to find the best services.
Getting started using Legal Translation Services
Even the most basic requirements of determining the legal structure of your business and registering a tradename ask for getting translations. And for smaller businesses, registering and licensing cannot be completed without translation if you are engaging foreign parties in your business.
These parties can be the employees who’d run the business for you, or these can be the suppliers which you’d engage from other parts of UAE. It is advisable to get a legal translation services provider on board from the beginning and keep engaged with them for a long.
It is common for repeat customers to get discounted rates, and the same principle applies to service providers. So be it the translation of a local service agent agreement (LSA) or Memorandum of Association (MOA), you are assured to be provided with good services.
Growth & Customer Satisfaction
Have you ever been surprised at the amounts spent by big corporates on managing their brand identity? The reasons are simple; they operate on the basis of customer trust. A business might start in a local market with a select number of customers while communicating in a foreign language. But for it to cater to a larger audience, the availability of its content and products in the local language is important.
Product or service specifications to terms, everything has to be made available in the local language. Any business in Lamcy Plaza Abu Dhabi to a store in City Mall in Dubai would not get customers without making their literature available in Arabic.
It is highly recommended that you engage with a legal translation service provider to get your customer content converted into the local language. They would be able to look into all aspects of your content before interpreting and converting it into the local language.
Localization & Contextualization
With over 200 nationalities residing in UAE, the country is vibrant with languages and cultural representations. Different pronunciations and dialects are prevalent in this federation of seven emirates. Even though the official language is Arabic in UAE, still within Arabic, three dialects are identified by linguists in UAE, i.e., Abu Dhabi (the western region and islands), the Northern Emirates (Dubai, Ajman, Umm-al-Quwain, etc.), and the East Coast (including Fujairah, Khawr Fakkan, etc.).
This is a common practice and trend in translations in today’s world that translations are tailored to address the local contexts. For instance, with three-fifths of the Muslim population in UAE, close tailoring of any content to this majority population would be required for any business to operate in UAE.
Legal translation services available in UAE engage native speakers for their translation work. A native person does not only apply the technical knowledge and expertise in translations but also uses the cultural context to provide appropriate interpretations. By working with freelancers, you can only expect to get a local understanding of one language. The other language is converted on the basis of bilingual capacities.
It is advisable to engage native speakers for crucial legal documentation through translation service providers. These companies would engage with native speakers from their pool of experts and provide accurate work according to your requirements.
Compliance & Legitimacy
No business, whether big or small, can afford to face litigation due to a lack of legal translation in Dubai. And apart from the legality of the existence of a business, almost all functions of a business are governed by applicable laws, policies, and SoPs.
Almost all business and enterprise owners complete the basics; however, lags happen when it comes to dealings within the business operations. From a simple rental agreement for a vehicle or space to completing documentary requirements for engaging staff in the business, legal documentation is a daily requirement.
Suppose you hire a local vendor for the provision of services on a regular basis; you would require a work contract on a retainer ship basis. For local vendors and to comply with the local requirements in UAE, this contract has to be developed in Arabic. And in the case of a foreign language, it has to be translated into Arabic. But due to an oversight, some clauses are not represented as they should be in the translated version of the contract.
If challenged by the vendor against the same mistake or a different interpretation of the same oversight, this will not only cost you money but can also result in a lawsuit. This then goes beyond money and will risk your reputation, not to mention the time it would take to settle the lawsuit. The technical terms in legal translations are to be dealt with intricately so that nothing could be wrongly interpreted in a different language.
Translation ServicePproviders in the UAE
Most of the translation service providers in the UAE give complete attention to detail to legal translations by engaging a team for legal translation work. It is very rare to find a legal expert having bilingual skills with a clear understanding of cultural differences. A normal legal translation team companies include two native speakers providing the basic draft and a legal expert overlooking it for quality assurance.
It is pertinent to mention that most of the time, the rates charged by legal translation services are similar to the freelancers or individuals. The reason is simple, the magnitude of customers available in their portfolio results in a reasonable annual turnover, thus enabling these service providers to negotiate their rates. As mentioned earlier, it is always worth being a repeat customer!
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