Legal translation service
The Legal Translation Service provides volunteers and clients with opportunities in both spoken and written foreign language provision.
Interpreting
This group was set up in 2004 in recognition of the demand by legal advice centres for interpreters to facilitate the legal advice giving process.
Our group's goal is to promote the use of volunteer law students who have either fluent or native ability in both English and a foreign language. Our students explain complex legal concepts and procedures to clients in simple terms in the clients' own language at no cost to the client or law centre. In addition to the obvious benefits reaped by the clients and law centres from this work, it also provides a valuable opportunity for law students, who are not yet qualified to give legal advice on their own.
Translation
In terms of written translations, our service to non-profit organisations has expanded greatly since we started and allows volunteers to work on a stimulating mix of international legal issues. Our Russian speakers translated much of the research and correspondence related to a June 2005 International Bar Association fact-finding mission to investigate proposed changes to the judiciary in Russia. More recently in 2009 we have been working regularly with Global Witness in translating documents which highlight the link between environmental exploitation and human rights abuses in resource rich, developing countries.
Below is a list of the languages that are available most academic years.
| Arabic | Italian | Serbo-Croat |
| Bengali | Japanese | Singhalese |
| British Sign Language | Konkani | Slovak |
| Cantonese | Korean | Spanish |
| Czech | Malay | Swahili |
| Farsi | Malayalam | Tagalog (Filipino) |
| French | Mandarin | Tamil |
| German | Nepalese | Turkish |
| Greek | Polish | Ukranian |
| Gujarati | Portuguese | Urdu |
| Hebrew | Punjabi | Yoruba |
| Hindi | Romanian | |
| Indonesian | Russian |
Making a request
If your organisation has an appointment for a non-English speaking client, you may contact us to request an interpreter by emailing a completed interpreter request form to translation@bpplaw.co.uk indicating the language required in the subject line. To make a request to have a document translated please send a completed translation request form to translation@bpplaw.co.uk.
For further information please contact:
Kara Irwin Director of Pro Bono, 020 7430 5677 |
David Gallagher and Ekaterina Savchenko Student Director, |