La traducción legal perfecta no existe

Encontré esta discusión en ProZ sumamente interesante ya que hubo tanto respuestas a algunas dudas que tenía como confirmaciones a ideas que siempre me han parecido idóneas. Se trata de minimizar las posibilidades de ambigüedades y errores del texto destino de una traducción jurídica. Lejos el mejor y más avezado contribuyente a esta discusión es Henry Hinds, una eminencia en el mundo de las traducciones jurídicas ES-EN.

Desde luego yo le sugiero al lector que lea el contenido cabal de la discusión, pero agrego las siguientes citas del Sr. Hinds que me parecen sabias y loables:

"My clients are entitled to 100% of my expertise in translating a text, so I will not deprive them of any bit of knowledge I might be able to contribute although risky, rather than omit something; 2.- Many times the rest of the text will not make any sense if it cannot be completed, so I do my utmost to complete it; and 3.- I will only reconstruct part of a text when I know I an positively reproduce it word for word in the source language on demand."

" I try to use a smooth and natural style in the target language while not omitting any of the nuances, which is not easy but comes with much practice. However, there are times when the language may have to come out somewhat stilted as there is no other way to observe precision which is paramount."

"As an example for reconstruction, I had to come up with an entire line that had been lopped off the end of a page. Fortunately I had a pretty good idea of what it should say, and the original paper from which the copy had been made was apparently very thin, as a shadow of text on the other side showed through.

I found where the shadow of the missing line should be and held it up to a mirror, and using that mirror image I was able to confirm and reconstruct a line that was not on the page. Of course I included a note explaining what I had done."

Cardinal or Ordinal numbers in Legal English

I recently asked a question on a ProZ forum about cardinal (one, two, three) and ordinal (first, second, third) numbers when numbering clauses (e.g. Clause One or First Clause?) Click here to see what professional legal translators had to say.