22 Biotechnology Law Report 305Number 3 (June 2003)© Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.

Professional Practice

305

Advice on Choosing a Translator

Liz Elting, President and CEO of TransPerfectTranslations of New York City, has published someadvice for attorneys who wish to do business inter-nationally. Translation is not simply replacing wordsin one language with those in another, and the factthat a person speaks a language other than Englishdoes not automatically mean he or she is qualified totranslate legal documents to and from that language.

Translators should be experienced industry spe-cialists. For certain types of documents, legal ex-pertise also is needed. Ideally, the same translatorwill be kept throughout a case and maintain glos-saries of terms to ensure consistency.

Elting also noted that prices for translation differaccording to the language and time constraints. Youshould expect a competent translator to do about10,000 words per week.