Legal De-Scribing

Simple and complicated are a matter of perspective. What is child’s play for one person is a challenge for another. Likewise, a straightforward sentence in one language can be tricky for a translator in another language.

Take for example this short legal clause in Hebrew:

המסמך מחייב אישור מהמנהל.                        

Word for word, it says:

(   a)  The document requires approval from the manager.

That doesn’t work in English because documents are rather self-sufficient creatures and in themselves don’t require anything. So, let’s play with the grammar:

(   b)  The document must be approved by the manager.

(   c)   The manager must approve the document.

Sentence (c) is the active version of (b), generally a preferable form.  However, both sentences suffer from the same ambiguity. They could be interpreted to mean that the manager has no choice but to approve it, which is not true. The next example suffers from the same potential problem:

(   d)  Approval of the document by the manager is required.

The option that I chose in order to be perfectly clear is as follows:

(   e)  The document is subject to approval by the manager.

It may be that even better options exist. If so, I would like to hear. The search for perfection is the passion behind good translation. Like all so ambitions, it is very from simple.