SanTranslate has recently completed a court interpretation for a Chinese client. What might have been a simple assignment for a small claim turned out to be more costly than expected when the defendant vigorously denied the charges.
It highlighted a couple of things that are worth bearing in mind should you find yourself on either side of such a situation.
Firstly, in this instance, although the defendant had a family member with good English who translated around 400 pages of statements for them, this could turn out to be a short-sighted approach. Without a professional translation, there is a strong possibility that the judge could query the accuracy of the translation, causing delays in proceedings. Additionally, should they win the court case, they might not have the translation costs reimbursed, adding to their inconvenience and costs of defending the case.
Secondly, we have had occasions in the past where we have turned up for an interpretation assignment only to find that the client has cancelled the appointment. In these cases we have to levy our standard cancellation charge which is included in our terms and conditions. We appreciate that sometimes clients’ plans change which is why we urge them to notify us of such changes as soon as possible – that way they can avoid the cancellation charge and we can conveniently re-schedule the assignment.
