- June 8, 2022
- Gulfstream Legal
Litigation and therefore eDiscovery have gone global alongside the shift businesses have taken, which means more documents involved in eDiscovery do not originate in the English language. Legal professionals have long been stumped with the challenge of translating foreign language documents when they come up as part of eDiscovery.
Fortunately, newer tools available that apply artificial intelligence to translate documents and help legal professionals save time and money on their cases. Some tools even integrate with Realtivity to offer seamless workflows, further enhancing productivity. Taking translation services a step further than machine translation, there are companies like Linguistic Systems, Inc. offering machine translation, human translation when needed and full integration with Relativity.
Before starting work on a matter that may involve documents written in a foreign language, legal professionals should consult with their eDiscovery experts. Considerable time, money and hassle can be saved with some preplanning. Your expert will want to know:
- Why are you translating documents?
- What are they going to be used for?
- What is the value these documents might bring to your case?
After these points are considered, your experts can advise you on the best approach and workflow to meet the goals of your case.
Machine translation can quickly process tens of thousands of files a day to give you a general idea of the content of your foreign language documents. You then can determine which documents are irrelevant – only spending pennies and seconds of time – and which need further review by a human translator.
There are six levels of translation for foreign language documents involved in eDiscovery. In addition, different courts and regulatory agencies have different standards for certifying translated documents. We recently published a white paper that dissects the six levels of translation, and also tackling the topics of security, features of translating tools, costs and turn-around time. Download our Translating Foreign Language Documents in eDiscovery white paper now.