Solicitor made me translate a document

[Szesze11]

Hi, I feel my solicitor made me translate a contract document unnecessary. This cost me money.
I am in the process of buying a property and a small amount of the deposit came from a sold property from Hungary. I am buying the property in the UK. The contract is in Hungarian and they made me translate to English, which cost me money.
I supplied the original contract along with all transaction receipts relating to the transaction.
I thought the translation was needed for the mortgage application, but this wasn't the case. We actually received the mortgage application before sending the translated document.
When I questioned the solicitor they told me: "The checks completed by your lender are usually less in depth as they are completing affordability checks where as we are sourcing the funds as they travel through our accounts."
I just feel like the translation was totally unnecessary, as they could see the transaction details from the original contract, matched by all the other transaction receipts / bank statements.
What do you think?

OP are you expecting your conveyancing firm to have internal translation tools that translate from Hungarian to English? As obviously they absolutely cannot put confidential information into Google Translate.

The solicitor has personal criminal liability if they do not comply with money laundering requirements. Requiring an certified translation allows them to rely on that translation i.e. if the translation is wrong and that means that a money laundering risk isn't identified, it being a certified translator almost certainly gets the solicitor off the hook. If you think that conveyancing solicitors are paid enough to take on personal criminal liability because you don't want to pay for a certified translation (which presumably was peanuts in the context of all amounts being paid), then you have are way over estimating how much conveyancers are paid!

It's ' per se ', not per say. And the solicitor has to have the translation certified for authenticity. It has to stand legally, should there be a dispute.

And by 'are you expecting them to have' - are you expecting them to have paid for? As they can't use the free ones for the same reasons. Companies (including Google) do not provide tools for free - they use the data that is collected.

Exactly. You got a professional translation, which the solicitor then relied on.

If your money was laundered, and the SRA came calling, the conveyancer can point to her audit trail.

”Popped it through Babelfish, m’lud” does not count as an audit trail.

Obviously it needs to be professionally translated, you could have said it said anything otherwise, whereas professionals are swearing by the translation they have translated.

It's really not a confusing thing, it's just a legality

"a small amount of the deposit came from a sold property from Hungary."

At my firm our money laundering checks include checks as to where funds we will be receiving come from. Where you have international element we're often required to undertake enhanced checks. As others have said failure to comply with money laundering requirements can result in being struck off and jailed.

Your solicitors had to do the necessary money laundering checks and couldn't rely on a Google link as they'd have no way of verifying the quality of the translation. By using a certified translator even if the translation is is unlikely they'd be criticised/penalised as they could rely on the fact a certified professional had been used.

it is people like you who are undermining translator's work and, frankly, it is alarming.

If you get a professional translation done, notified as requested, there is no comeback on you or the solicitor if it turns out to be wrong. If AI (or google translate or whatever) is used: the solicitor who accepted it is liable. And that is all right and proper.

And you understand that automated translators are trained on scraping years of professional human work, without consent?

I agree with the posters who have said this will have been a requirement of the solicitors who have a very heavy burden to bear with regards to verifying the source of funds.

It's a skilled job full stop.

Phrasing like "with technology's state" is exactly why translators should not be replaced by AI, or by DIY translations like yours.

There is still quite a lot of work available reviewing work done by have-a-go heroes. Usually clients with this attitude end up paying twice: they waste time translating on Google then have to pay for the professionals to put it right.

Very annoying not to mention dangerous when it comes to legally binding or medical documents.

I don't think that not understanding why something can't be done makes a person "embarrassing @LiterallyOnFire. If anything, your response is.

And if a qualified/professional translator cocked up they'd have insurance.

It would likely have cost you more if you’d expected your solicitor to do the translating. How much did you pay?

For money laundering purposes, they are obliged to verify the source of any funds used in a transaction involving large sums. They needed to have the document translated, and presumably asked you to do it because if they'd done it themselves, they would have charged you for their time, and solicitors' time costs money.

Yes, online 'translation' tools can match some words and phrases and produce a document in English, but will online 'translation' tools check the translation and produce a signed certificate that the translation is accurate? Thought not.

ps. online 'translation' tools save and use all the data you enter, unless you have paid for a licence (hundreds of pounds). If you are not paying for the product, you are the product.

Apart from the disrespect you show to qualified translators, who do have just as many years of training as the builders you mention above, the issue here is that the solicitor can't check for and rule out money laundering based on a contract in Hungarian or a contract that has been run through a free online translation tool.

The solicitor can only check for and rule out money laundering based on a contract in English that is a certified true and accurate version of the Hungarian contract.

The money laundering checks check the origin of all the funds being used for a property purchase and makes sure they do not originate from criminal activity. So it is important that there is a certified legal document in English proving the origins of the money coming from the property sale in Hungary.

That's not what I said.

I said that casting aspersions on the solicitor was embarrassing. It is. Especially from a position of complete ignorance.

It doesn't matter you can do it in minutes. You need a certified translator that's final.
I used to buy and sell frequently. I always used the same solicitor. However, if it had been more than three months since our last transaction, I had to go in with passport, proof of address etc. So it might be I repeated that two or three times a year. Ridiculous perhaps, but they still needed to check and I still needed to comply.
Maybe someday the technology will be adopted, but we have the system we have and must operate within it.

I think OP has probably got the message now 😀

It isn't a waste of money, OP, though I can see why you might think that.

A certified translator will take responsibility for a translation in the way that I'm pretty sure an AI translation tool won't - I'll bet that there are loads of disclaimers in the small print. And ultimately, your solicitor needs someone to take responsibility for the translation if it subsequently transpires that your money isn't as clean as you say it is.

I think you are being unreasonable - in a professional context one would need to use a professional translator. The solicitor is acting professionally.

hi

Was this to resurrect a zombie thread? What was the point?

It really isn't. It "may" be redundant for trivial and unimportant things like friendly letters, recipes, travel directions, instruction leaflets, etc (even instruction leaflets are often wrong). But for legal documents, no Court in the land would accept a "google translation" as being acceptable. One of my clients is a German translator and is as busy as ever as most of his work is legal documents, contracts, etc., and he's said many times that he'll randomly get a document translated via Google as a comparison and finds huge numbers of really important mistakes due to Google not being able to recognise nuance and only ever doing a basic/Noddy level of translation meaning sometimes entire paragraphs/sentences are completely wrong.

At worst your solicitor could end up in prison, at best lose their practising cert. Sorry buying houses is an expensive pain in the arse that's just the way it is.