CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

This draft is far too long – you need to make major cuts so that the whole thing does not exceed
20,000 words – I have made some suggestions but this is a very important issue

Start with a simple paragraph stating what this minor thesis is about I, the researcher of this study,
have worked as a legal translator for more than three years from 2011 up to this time at different
law firms based in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) with different working styles and working
environment. What I have experienced so far in this position, though, is more or less the same. in
these firms and, more to the point, in the context of growing integration and globalization upon
Vietnam’s joining WTO since 2007, I desire to bring to light my own experiences as well as those
of other legal translators working at law firms HCMC once market demands on this occupation has
sharply increased. In the hope that Legal Translation and other key issues attached thereto, i.e.
Vietnamese Legal System, Vietnamese Legal Translators, and Legal Translation Training in
HCMC, will, to some extent, be known to those who have an interest in the field, this study was
accordingly born for the purpose of helping readers hereof partially visualize Legal Translation and
its belongings in their mind, through which they could better understand this occupation and people
who are living it day after day. and when they are asked accidentally about Legal Translation some
day, they will have something to tell in both positive and negative ways.

1.1 Vietnamese Legal Context although these sections are interesting, you’ll probably beed to
make them much shorter due to word length problems

1.1.1 The Emergence of Legal Translation in Vietnam

Successfully gaining independence from the United States of America (the U.S.) in 1975, which
marked a new era of peace, the Vietnamese government has used its best endeavors to re-build the
country, including, among other elements, promoting its integration into international markets
through a restructuring process called “Doi Moi” started in 1986 (Abbott, Bentzen & Tarp, 2007).
Concretely, as revealed in Abbott’s, Bentzen’s and Tarp’s discussion paper No. 07 – 06 (2007),
Vietnam has conducted negotiations for bilateral trade agreements to be signed to enhance its
“market-oriented legal and economic reforms” as well as to give rise to remarkable institutional
changes to render the country “a more open, socialist-oriented market economy”. Vietnam entered
into a bilateral agreement with the European Union (EU) in 1992, joined ASEAN in 1995, executed

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a bilateral trade agreement with the U.S. in 2000, and gained access to WTO as the 150 th member
on 11 January 2007 which was considered one of its most significant achievements for the nation’s
development, to name a few. It is the negotiations process through which major agreements were
reached for the sake of Vietnam’s economy that required for a considerable amount of Vietnamese
legislation to be translated into other languages including English, a chosen language for
international trade, and vice versa. Once there arises a need for translation of legislative texts of
different countries, Legal Translation emerges as an essential course of action that helps speed up
global integration among the nations, as a result of which demand for skilled legal translators has
long risen dramatically. The truth is the farther Vietnam’s trade is broadened, the greater amount of
translation on legal issues is desired, and as Vietnam’s lifelong ambition is to expand its global
footprint, the sustainable existence of Legal Translation will not be in doubt.

1.1.2 Basic Structure of Vietnamese Legal System

Ruled by China during the eleven hundred years before 938 A.D when Confucianism was applied
and then by the French who “imposed another alien layer of law on the Vietnamese” (The
Vietnamese Legal System, n.d.), Vietnam was unable to form its own legal system without being
significantly affected by its rulers’ ones. Indeed, the current Vietnamese Legal System is largely
“based on the socialism legal theory and inherited from French civil law system.” (Basic Structure
of Vietnam Legal System, Kenfox IP & Law Office, 2009). To put it another way, the nation
operates under Socialist Law that communist states have used to run their countries with civil law
system employed as a foundation (Wikipedia).

Recognized as “the highest organ of state power,” the National Assembly of Vietnam is a
legislative body who appoints the President, the Prime Minister, the Chief Justice of the Supreme
People’s Court of Vietnam, the Head of the Supreme People’s Procuracy of Vietnam, and the
Government of 21 members. This unicameral body is also liable for the law making activities,
including drawing up, adopting, and amending the Constitution and laws. While Committees as
well as other subordinate bodies under the National Assembly assist it in making law, ministries or
agencies of ministerial level will be in charge of law drafting. As the Constitution regulates, drafted
legal documents will be submitted to agencies of appropriate levels for their consideration, revision,
and approval, subject to level of legalization applicable to each document (Basic Structure of
Vietnam Legal System, Kenfox IP & Law Office, 2009).

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The present Constitution of Vietnam was adopted by the National Assembly in April, 1992, and
amended in 2001, under which are laws, ordinances, decrees and other associated legal documents
that deal with various aspects of social life. In particular:

 Laws: adopted by the National Assembly and are highest form of legal direction of
Vietnam;
 Ordinances: adopted by the Standing Committee under the National Assembly when the
Assembly is not in session;
 Decrees: adopted by the Government and generally issued for the purpose of
implementing Laws and Ordinances and often modified by more detailed Regulations;
 Orders: issued by the State President upon promulgation of Laws and Ordinances;
 Government Decisions: issued by the Prime Minister guiding the implementation of
regulations on certain issues;
 Circulars: issued by ministries individually to provide guidelines on how a ministry
manages the implementation of a Law, Ordinance or Decree;
 Guidelines: issued by the Prime Minister in the form of policy outlines, but not legal
instruments, indicating that it is imperative to establish governmental committees to cope
with certain issues;
 Ministerial decisions: issued by a Minister (or a Deputy Minister on his behalf) providing
regulations on some issues in the areas administered by the relevant Ministry.
Figure 1: The diagram of Law making bodies and Legal System in Vietnam

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(Source: Kenfox IP & Law Office, 2009, http://www.kenfoxlaw.com/resources/legal-topics/12958-basic-structure-of-
vietnam-legal-system.html)

Above is merely a brief but quite a sufficient description of the Vietnamese Legal System provided
by Kenfox IP & Law Office with particular types of applicable legal documents to be complied with
upon occurrence of any business or investment in Vietnam.
End of section to be shorter
1.1.3 Legal Translation in HCMC

There exist two kinds of Legal Translators in HCMC Legal Context who have worked diligently to
protect their position in such a challenging and competitive sector, whether they are full-time
employees for a particular law firm or freelancers for different companies or clients. The fact
remains that there are more and more law companies being established in Vietnam in general and in
HCMC in particular in an effort to satisfy hungers for practical legal advice on cross-border
transactions and where there is a law firm to be built, there is a need for legal translator(s) to be
employed. Subject to each firm’s operational scale, the firm will determine whether it should hire a
full-time legal translator or a project-based freelance translator from time to time. This, in fact,
gives equal chances for both types of legal translators as mentioned above to survive this job as well
as for law companies or individual clients to run their business in a more cost-effective manner.

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Regardless of their working styles, the majority of legal translators working in HCMC are English
majors in such primary areas as English Translation and Interpretation, Pedagogy, or English for
Specific Purposes with knowledge of Legal Translation mainly earned by way of on-the-job
training and self-studying.

1.2 Overview of Translation Education in Vietnam

Translation has long been taught in institutions of higher education across Vietnam with
materials/textbooks specifically designed to equip students with necessary translation and
interpretation skills. Table 1.1 that follows is a summary of typical materials/textbooks utilized for
translation teaching/training at certain institutions nationwide.

Name of Material/Textbook Name of Author Year of Name of

Publication University/College/Institution
Translation Theory 2002 Da Nang University; College of
Pedagogy
Unnaturalness in English – Le Phuong Lan 2006 Hanoi University
Vietnamese Translation:
Causes and Cures
Vietnamese – English MA. Nguyen Thanh 2009 Can Tho University
Translation Practice 2 Duc
(Thực hành Luyện dịch Việt-
Anh 2)
Translation 1, 2, 4, &5 Nguyen Van Tuan 2009 Hue University College of Foreign
Languages
Translation Psychology Nguyen Van Tuan 2009 Hue University College of Foreign
Languages
Translation and Interpretation Pham Thi Thanh 2010 Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam
Theory Huyen
A Translation Course in Nguyen Ngoc Tam 2011 Ton Duc Thang University
Business Translation
Vietnamese – English Minh Thu – Nguyen 2014 University of Social Sciences and
Translation Practice Hoa Humanities
(Luyện dịch Việt – Anh)

Table 1.1: Summary of Translation Training Textbooks/Materials

(Source: http://www.ebook.edu.vn/?page=1.5&tag=d%E1%BB%8Bch+thu%E1%BA%ADt&alltxt=Y)

It is obviously shown through Table 1 that Legal Translation has remained being excluded from
translation training in Vietnam for years even though this 21st century has created enormous
demands on such area and on legal translators as well. This training issue will be discussed in more
detail in later Chapters of this study.

1.3 Statement of the Problem

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Notwithstanding increasing demands on Legal Translation resulting from Vietnam’s accession into
international organizations over time, I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of legal
translators who could successfully cope with the challenges and difficulties brought by Legal
Translation in HCMC at the present time. To my best knowledge and belief, HCMC has usually
faced an acute shortage of competent legal translators who own requisite skills and knowledge for
the job and have a good command of at least two languages that are English and Vietnamese. Upon
Vietnam’s entry into WTO since 2007, foreign investments pouring into the country has continued
to rise in volume and when Vietnamese turns to be one of the organization’s official languages, the
demand for English-Vietnamese translation has never been that high and qualified and skilled
translators of specialist texts on, among others, legal and economic issues, have never been that
“hot”. Still, demand is exceeding supply once most institutions, comprising both universities and
training centers in HCMC that offer translation training programs, have not yet effectively trained
and produced an elite group of translators equipped with real-life practice as well as with helpful
translation strategies to meet the current market needs for business and Legal Translation. It is
believed that the present translation syllabi applied in most institutions in HCMC are hardly
designed, evaluated and improved according to the social and cultural development as well as
market demands, let alone Legal Translation. As revealed through my own experience who was
once a student of translation, students of English Interpretation and Translation at my time were not
taught any specialized translation but general translation theories. More precisely, what the students
wanted was “practical training” whereas what they actually received was nothing more but
“abstract education,” as Szczyrbak described in her 2008’s article on the same issue. Apart from
universities’ academic translation training as afore-mentioned where Legal Translation is not
included, certain companies, centers or institutes as INTERPROTRANS (a limited liability
company), Center for Human Resource Development under Vietnam National University, and ILI
(International Language Institute), to name a few, with translation classes organized for the people
in need of a more professional translation training in a variety of areas such as culture, economy,
politics, medicine, etc., also give no room for Legal Translation to be taught officially (Young
Translators Club, n.d.). On the other hand, these courses are merely short-term so the knowledge
comes to its learners like a flash in mind and without much real-life practice, there is a strong
possibility that the learners pass the courses empty-handed.

1.4 Aim of the Study

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It is the problem as above stated that urges me to make a start on this study for the purpose of
exploring the education and experiences of legal translators in HCMC and, at the same time,
examining translation courses conducted in universities based in HCMC to see if the courses meet
the needs identified by the legal translators in practice.

1.5 Research Questions:

In order to ‘guide my boat’ to the right destination, I owe a duty to find satisfactory answers to the
following Research Questions:

1. What are the experiences of legal translators in Ho Chi Minh City?

2. Do translation courses in Ho Chi Minh City’s universities address the needs identified by
the legal translators in practice?

1.6 Significance of the Study

In the case this study is successfully conducted, it will significantly contribute to translation studies,
Legal Translation in this case, by reason of the following:
1 – It unfolds tales of legal translators working in HCMC, particularly the education they received
and the experiences accumulated in the course of their daily work, thanks to which audience can
visualize a more obvious picture of the so-called ‘Legal Translation’ and learn if legal translators
were well trained and adequately equipped to do their job smoothly and professionally.
2 – It digs deep into translation training programs that are available in the market to examine
whether the courses are adequate to meet current needs for any specific professions; whether Legal
Translation is taught; whether the training programs are a combination of theory and practice that
will allow students to hone their translation skills.
3 – It proposes effective approaches to teaching Legal Translation upon knowing the current
situation of Legal Translation training.
4 – It draws the attention of concerned persons and officials to the vital role of Legal Translation
and of making Legal Translation a compulsory subject in English language education for the
purpose of producing more accurate and perfect translation of legal issues and forming teams of
competent and professional legal translators also to satisfy the market’s hungers.

1.7 Limitations and Delimitations of the Study

1.7.1 Limitations of the Study

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Given time constraint and the researcher’s capacity, the study is restricted to a limited number of
participants within the region of HCMC only whereas a larger group of participants across the
country will render the research much more valuable and convincing. This restriction, however,
does not matter much but rather paving the way for further thorough study on other material aspects
of the same issue to be implemented as long as Legal Translation and the training thereof is still a
matter of interest.

1.7.2 Delimitations of the Study

I choose to study, inter alia, Legal Translation out of various areas of specialized translation as I
am, as a legal translator for a UK reputable law firm at present, well aware of the increasing market
demand on qualified legal translators and of the severe shortage of well-trained translators who
could effectively deal with the job. That is not to say other areas of translation are inferior to
translation of legislative texts, yet, in the context of global integration whereby all business and
commercial activities across the globe are legally binding, making legal systems of all countries
comprehensible by way of translation for business and investment purposes has become an
‘absolute must’.

1.8 Outline of the Study

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This study is composed of Six Themed Chapters arranged in the following order:

Chapter One, or the Introductory Chapter, presents the background to the study by giving a brief
description of Vietnamese Legal System plus the Reasons giving room for Legal Translation to
grow in Vietnam. The Statement of the Problem is introduced next, followed by the Study’s
Purposes and specific Research Questions. This Chapter One additionally states How Significant
This Study Is to translation studies in general and to Legal Translation and its training in particular.
Lastly, Limitations and Delimitations of this research are also made known to readers in this very
first Chapter.

The Literature associated with central issues of this study, Legal Translation and Translation
Training at Tertiary Level, is thoroughly reviewed and reported in Chapter Two to provide readers
with an overall understanding of Legal Translation, entailing Characteristics thereof and
Difficulties and Problems encountered in this area of translation. The following Section considers
the Requirements for Legal Translators and the Teaching of Translation/Legal Translation comes
last to close the Chapter.

Chapter Three deals with the Methodology selected to conduct this study, which is Narrative
Inquiry, accompanied by a particular set of data collection instruments, embracing Narrative
Interviews, Legal Instruments, and Translation Training Materials. An analytical framework, or
data analysis techniques, will then be expressly described. What is finally disclosed is information
on the Research Setting and Participants and some cautions of Narrative Inquiry.

Stories of Four Different Legal Translators working in HCMC, including those of the researcher
herself, are unfolded in Chapter Four in order for audience to ‘sense’ how a legal translator
survives his/her daily job as well as how challenging and difficult such job could become. To put it
another way, this Chapter Four is where the interviewed legal translators share the experiences
accumulated during years of their employment as translators of legal issues and what kinds of
attitudes they are having towards this occupation.

The stories retold in Chapter Four pave the way for Chapter Five to present A Thematic Analysis of
Data and to Discuss in more Detail the Findings generated from all the collected data. In this
Chapter, the data will be analysed based on primary themes/categories arisen out of the interview
questions with evidence drawn from the participants’ responses and also from the theoretical
framework that is previously built in Chapter Two. In parallel with the analysis of any particular

9
theme, the related findings will also be discussed to create interconnections among the information
earned from the narrative interviews.

Chapter Six serves as a Conclusion of the entire study where answers to the Research Questions as
set out in Chapter One will be provided. Certain Recommendations for the prevailing Problems are
proposed as well to render Legal Translation more reachable and, more to the point, other
researchers will be given convincing reasons to conduct further research on Legal Translation
should they find this occupation still worth studying.
This chapter can be much shorter – give it a thorough edit

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 CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW

As partially revealed in the Introductory Chapter, Vietnam’s entry into the World Trade
Organization (WTO) in 2007 gave rise to the so-called Legal Translation, which has generated high
demands on legal translators at the same time in Vietnam in general and in HCMC in particular.
Without doubt, readers hereof cannot deeply understand what Legal Translation is and how legal
translators deal with their job on a daily basis in HCMC legal context unless this occupation and its
people are then examined under a microscope. This Chapter Two is accordingly shaped to make this
happen by providesing a theoretical framework through a presentation of related literature and
empirical studies focusing on the following issues: Definitions of Terms relevant to
Translation/Legal Translation; noticeable Characteristics of Legal Translation; major Difficulties
and Problems faced by legal translators and an Overview of Translation Teaching/Training at
Tertiary Level.

2.1 Definition of Terms I still do not like this section – define each briefly the first time you
use it and only where absolutely necessary ie the first three are essential. Some could be
included in the section on problems eg complex language etc. Avoid any repetition

2.1.1 Translation

While a variety of definitions of the term Translation have been suggested, this present study will
use the definition suggested by Wilss (1982: 134) who saw it as “a transfer process which aims at
the transformation of a written Source Language text into an optimally equivalent Target Language
text, and which requires the syntactic, the semantic and the pragmatic understanding and analytical
processing of the Source Language text.”

2.1.2 Legal Translation

Generally, Legal Translation is a law-based translation process involving the translation of legal
texts used in different legal settings (Al-Nakhalah 2013: 167). According to Šarčević (1997: 13),
Legal Translation is not merely translating from the source language into the target language but is
also “a translation from one legal system into another – from the source legal system into the target
legal system.”

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2.1.3 Legal Text/Legal Document

Harvey (2002), by summarizing related theories, introduces a more inclusive definition of a Legal
Text as follows: “documents which are, or may become, part of the judicial process: for instance,
contracts, wills, court documents, witness statements and expert reports, which are “bread and
butter” activities for lawyers and legal translators.”

2.1.4 Legal System

A well-known website called BusinessDictionary.com defines Legal System as “legal regimen of a

country consisting of (1) a written or oral constitution, (2) primary legislation (statutes) enacted by
the legislative body established by the constitution, (3) subsidiary legislation (bylaws) made by
person or bodies authorized by the primary legislation to do so, (4) customs applied by the courts on
the basis of traditional practices, and (5) principles or practices of civil, common, Roman, or other
code of law.”

2.1.5 Source Language (SL)

Throughout this paper, the term Source Language (SL) will refer to “the text before translating
where the processes of reading comprehension, analysis and researching are carried out” (Abdellah
2004: 25).

2.1.6 Target Language (TL)

In parallel with Source Language, Target Language (TL) will be used to refer to “the text after
translation where the processes of composing, rephrasing and editing are carried out” (Abdellah
2004: 25).

2.2 Characteristics of Legal Translation

To facilitate the study’s readers in understanding Legal Translation soundly, it is requisite to

introduce certain noteworthy features that Legal Translation possesses as elaborated in the sections
that follow. Much of this could be integrated and shortened when combined with the problems
section

2.2.1 Legal Discourse

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Matijašević (2013: 120) contends that legal discourse owns a number of interesting features, as
revealed by numerous studies, and one of its distinctive features is “the simultaneous need for high
terminological precision and ambiguity” once expressly defined and accurate terms are always
prioritized in constructing a legal text. Also from Matijašević (2013: 120), daily judicial practice
has concurrently witnessed multiple interpretations of legal texts notwithstanding the legislator’s
enormous efforts to obtain precision at a high level and ambiguity is sometimes created on purpose.
It is such special feature of legal discourse that raises a question as to how legal translators cope
with ambiguous terms.

In respect of morphosyntactic level of discourse, the model verb “shall” is specially used in a large
amount to express an obligation, rather than expressing future time as its common function to
secure legal effect that legal texts are supposed to have (Ibid.). To take one example, the following
sentence in a Guarantee describes an obligation with the use of the model verb “shall”: “Any
communication to be made under or in connection with the Finance Documents shall be made in
writing”; that is to say any notice to be made must be made in written form; otherwise, it will be
deemed invalid.

Very long and complex sentences partly indicate syntactic aspect of legal discourse. As Gustafsson
discovered in 1975 when conducting his research into sentence length, fifty five (55) is the average
number of words per sentence in legal texts which doubles those of natural sciences and eight times
more than that of spoken English (as cited in Gotti 2005). Concerning the level of embedding,
Hiltunen’s research carried out in 1984 suggested that the average embedding level in legal
discourse is 3.09, compared to 2 in other ESP discourses as figured out by Ellegard in 1978 (as
cited in Gotti 2005).

Gotti also adds other typical features of legal discourse such as repetitively used expressions and
preferentially applied complex conjunctions, which were derived from his study on specialized
discourse in 2005.

2.2.2 Fidelity

Šarčević (2000: 1), one of the leading Legal Translation experts, reminds that authenticated
translations (translations of legislation, treaties, conventions, judicial decisions, contracts, etc.
approved and/or adopted in the manner prescribed by law) ‘are not regarded as “mere translations”
but as originals and are not even referred to as translation’ (as cited in Laurea 2012: 54).

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Accordingly, in a bid to assure strict adherence to the source text, literal translation was applied to
legal texts for a long time as Šarčević concludes below:

For centuries literal translation was the only acceptable translation procedure for all legal
texts, especially legislation. For the purpose of preserving the letter of the law, translation
adhered to the principle of fidelity to the source text by reconstructing the form and

substance of the original text as closely as possible.

(Šarčević 2006: 28)

Given the principle of fidelity as raised above, whether fidelity to the “letter” outweighs fidelity to
the “spirit” or vice versa in Legal Translation has been a matter for debate over time, dating back
to the days of the Roman Empire when formal correspondence between source and target text was
decreed to be vital to preserve the meaning of both Biblical and legal documents (Gémar 1995a: 26-
30; Šarčević 1997: 23-48, as cited in Harvey 2002: 180). Today, Legal Translation specialists
define fidelity in a broader sense as “achieving an equivalent impact on the target reader, which may
justify substantial changes to the original text to respect the stylistic conventions of the target legal
culture” (Harvey 2002: 180).

Regardless of its debatable nature, fidelity (including linguistic fidelity) is still always a requirement
for legal translators to meet in Legal Translation (cf. Gawron-Zaborska 2000; Kasirer 2000: 57). In
Kasirer’s view (2000: 57-59), the notion of fidelity demonstrates the positivist tradition in legal
interpretation with a belief that the meaning of a legal text is “declared”, rather than being construed
or created, by the person who interprets it.

2.2.3 Ambiguity and Interpretation

As reported by previous studies, one of the main reasons rendering the translation of legal texts a
problematic process is that ‘legal texts tend to be both very precise’ (Li 2006: 202) and ‘full of
ambiguities’ (Aarnio 1990: 73). Ambiguous feature of legal language is also confirmed by a number
of researchers, i.e. Aimar et al (2001: 195), who found that legal texts are typically “filled with
ambiguous rules and malleable language which can be mined and interpreted in support of a variety
of judicial decisions.” In Posner’s (1988: 240-2) and Jolicoeur’s (2000) opinion, the legal text in
this respect can be compared with the literary text where ambiguity is not considered a defect but as
an inherent characteristic to be preserved in translation.

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It is the problem of translating ambiguity that results in the question of interpretation. Legal
discourse itself is special in a way that interpretation-related disputes are settled by an official body,
a court in this case, pursuant to which the construction of a text is legally binding (Harvey 2002:
181). This really places legal translators in a sensitive position and it is strongly recommended that
the translator must avoid “interpreting” ambiguities since this is supposed to be a task to be
undertaken by trained lawyers (Lane 1982: 223; Beyer and Conradsen 1995: 153).

As far as deliberate ambiguity is concerned, legal translators should be facilitated to play a more
proactive role, rather than purely a “text producer”, which requires “interpretation to identify
ambiguity, decide it is deliberate, and choose to retain it in the translation” (Harvey, 2002: 182).

2.3 Difficulties and Problems Encountered in Legal Translation rearrange to include the
above, made more succinct

It is a well-known fact that specialized translation poses certain problems and difficulties and Legal
Translation is absolutely not an exception with its typical challenges. This is primarily because
legal systems vary from one country to another. What follows below is a detailed description of key
difficulties and problems encountered in translating legal documents with specific illustrations.

2.3.1 Terminology

Terminological equivalence is believed a problem of “keen interest”, having regarded the major
problems posed by Legal Translation (Capellas-Espuny 1999: 21). To put it another way, the
problems generated by “the absence of equivalents” are ones that have frightened off legal
translators at all times, and yet it is impossible to wipe them out. In fact, the main reason why
terminology has become a heavy burden to most legal translators may be attributable to the
diversity of legal systems as “a particular concept in a legal system may have no counterpart in
other systems” and the lack of exact terminological equivalents in different legal systems may be
deemed the cause of ambiguities, confusion and miscomprehension of all types (Ibid., p. 22). The
primary practical difficulty faced in Legal Translation, therefore, is to decide whether a concept is
similar or different in two languages, given the consequences which follow (Ibid., p. 22).
Researchers in the field of Legal Translation sharing the same opinions in this respect include
Šarčević (1997: 22) who confirmed the predominance of terminology by arguing that “Regardless
of the type of text involved, all legal translators must deal with the problem of terminological

15
incongruency”. She additionally views that translating the source legal system into the target legal
system means “selecting terminology that will achieve the desired results…” (22).

To take a few examples, under Vietnamese law there is no Vietnamese equivalents of these two
English legal terminologies “liquidated damages” and “consideration” which are defined in a legal
sense as “a sum of money (agreed-to and written into a contract) specified as the total amount of
compensation an aggrieved party should get, if the other party breaches certain part(s) of the
contract” (BusinessDictionary.com) and “something of value given by both parties to a contract that
induces them to enter into the agreement to exchange mutual performances” (The
FreeDictionary.com), respectively. In dealing with such terms in any legal document, what a legal
translator should do is not trying to find precise equivalents in the target language but rather
providing the most corresponding expressions in the target language, Vietnamese in this case, that
best preserve legal effect of the terms.

Weston (1983: 207) suggests another fundamental translation difficulty as far as terminological
issues are concerned that is “conceptual differences between languages due to cultural and more
specifically institutional reasons” (as cited in Altay 2002). In other words, the “culture-specific
quality” of legal texts is considered one of the most daunting aspects of Legal Translation in every
language (Altay 2002). Selmi and Trouille (n.d.) assert that Legal Translation, unlike any other
specialized translation field, requires its translators to have a clear understanding of the overall
institutional system to which certain notions belong, failing which there will be no accurate
translation thereof. That “the law of a country cannot be separated from its culture” helps explain
the foregoing and also puts forward a principle in translating legal instruments that is legal
translators must resort to “cultural transposition” upon encountering foreign concepts with no
equivalents in the culture of the target language (Selmi and Trouille, n.d.). Newmark (1973) opines
in this regard that a term denoting an item “peculiar to the source-language culture is more or less
untranslatable” in comparison with lexical items that are generally “more or less translatable.” Such
terms as “barrister” or “solicitor” may be used as examples of this case since such job titles do not
exist in the Vietnamese Legal System and will be translated as a lawyer in general. Given the fact
that not all legal translators are knowledgeable about the legal systems of both the source and the
target language, they may not perfectly comprehend the original text, in which case inaccurate
translation of the text may be inevitable.

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According to Al-Nakhalah (2013: 174), Latinisms (Latin-originated terms) is another noticeable
feature once “English legal lexicon” is being discussed. The fact remains that a large amount of
Latin terms are used quite frequently in legal documents. Table 2.1 below introduces a number of
popular Latin terms that could be easily found in certain legal texts:

Term or Phrase Literal Translation Definition and Use Example

The Guarantor must ensure that its
Equal in all respects, at the payment obligations under this
same pace or rate, in the same Agreement and any Finance
pari passu Ranking equally degree or proportion, or Document to which it is a party at all
enjoying the same rights times rank at least pari passu with
without bias or preference. the claims of all unsecured and
unsubordinated creditors.
A caution to a reader when
using one example to illustrate
a related but slightly different The changes proposed for the first
Having changed [the
mutatis situation. The caution is that contract apply mutatis mutandis to
things that] needed to
mutandis the reader must adapt the all other contracts.
be changed
example to change what is
needed for it to apply to the
new situation.
Audits, financial accountings and pro
pro forma As a matter of form Things done as formalities. forma budgets are merely
informative measures.
Deutsche Bank in India, which
Used to indicate an item cited
operates through five branches, is
inter alia Among others has been pulled from a larger
represented by, inter alia, the asset
or more complete list.
management business.

Table 2.1: Illustrations of Latin terms

(Source: List of Legal Latin Terms, Wikipedia).

Alcaraz and Brian (2002: 5) link the existence of Latin terms to a number of reasons, two of which
is that English law was influenced by Latin when the Roman church stretched its power over
Europe at that time and that Latin language was broadly used throughout Europe as a language of
learning and literature for centuries.

To put it in a nutshell, seeking for terminological equivalents is undeniably a painful process that all
legal translators must experience in translating legal documents; nonetheless, other apparent
difficulties generated from Legal Translation must not be ignored.

2.3.2 Grammatical Elements

There is no denying reference? that a solid grammar foundation leads to successful translation of all
types in all areas, especially Legal Translation in which great accuracy is desperately required
whereas no dictionary can be of help in assisting the translator to choose the grammatical item that

17
suits best the given context. For this reason, linguistic devices-oriented studies that examine how
phrases, sentences and paragraphs are linked together to form cohesive units of meaning is
considered as crucial as researching the terminology of a particular field (Selmi and Trouille, n.d.).
In view of the fact that grammatical structure partly conveys the meaning of a text, developing a
feel for the right grammatical elements (Ibid.), besides acquiring knowledge of terminology, has
become integral to the professional development process of all legal translators. Sadly, the more
important grammatical knowledge is to Legal Translation, the more stressful legal translators may
feel once encountering problems posed by this respect reference?.

In particular, Altay (2002) perceives the application of unusual sentence structure in the English
legal language one of the most basic grammatical issues confronted by legal translators. Old-
fashioned subjunctives, i.e. “let” or “may”, are blamed for giving rise to such problem (Altay
2002) while they should have been stopped being used in modern English, as suggested by Tiersma
(1999: 93). The following phrase frequently used at the beginning of a Power of Attorney “Know
all men by these presents” is definitely an uncommon sentence structure (Altay 2002) among plenty
of other odd grammatical structures that could be found in legal documents. Altay (2002)
additionally gives another example which is the case of the “British enactment clause” as presented
below:

Be it enacted by the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of
the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and

by the authority of the same….

(Tiersma 1999: 93)

This illustrative clause demonstrates, in addition to the subjunctive, several common features
existing in legal English, entailing French-style word order (Lords Spiritual and Temporal), formal
language (Queen’s most Excellent Majesty), unusual word order (in Parliament assembled), and
conjoined phrases (by and with, advice and consent) (Tiersma 1999: 93), all of which remain very
challenging characteristics to legal translators in general and to Vietnamese legal translators in
particular.

In concluding this Section that discusses problems and difficulties arising out of or in connection
with Legal Translation, I would like to quote Altay (2002) as saying that “While lawyers cannot
expect translators to produce parallel texts that are identical in meaning, they do expect them to
produce parallel texts that are identical in their legal effect.” Having considered such challenges as

18
above mentioned, it will be a mission impossible for legal translators to produce completely
identical texts in two languages but instead their main duty should be to create a text reflecting the
same legal effect in practice.

2.4 Requirements to be satisfied by Legal Translators

The earlier reviewed literature relevant to Legal Translation does support the opinion that legal
document translating can be regarded “more difficult than other technical translations” (Sonawane,
n.d.) and legal translators, therefore, have to satisfy a variety of both educational and professional
requirements to be considered qualified for such challenging occupation.

This next section is an interesting summary of what is needed by a legal translator and would be
useful much earlier to provide a good way into this chapter – then leading to the issues you talk
about above In his study titled Difficulties faced in Legal Document Translation, Sonawane (n.d.)
highlights a number of requirements for a legal translator to meet to survive legal translation in a
successful way. At first, a legal translator must be competent in three areas: “competency in the
target language’s particular writing style, familiarity with the pertinent terminology, and general
knowledge of the legal systems of the source and target languages” as word for word translation is
unacceptable in translating legal instruments (Ibid.). This requires a professional legal translator to
play various roles at the same time, “a detective, a legal scholar and a linguist,” who would conduct
a large amount of research to decode the source and write its actual meaning which will in no
circumstances deviate from the original text (Ibid.). Being knowledgeable of where the translation
will be used or to whom it is addressed is also required of a legal translator so that he/she could
choose the most appropriate approach in handling the document. In the case where the source text is
not well drafted, a legal translator plays a role here too in deciding whether to translate the text into
something as vague as the original one or make it meaningful, which could be the case but was
hindered by poor writing (Ibid.). A successful legal translator must further satisfy the requirements
of accuracy, confidentiality and punctuality (Translations Blog 2010).
Then this last bit remains the summary of this section of the chapter
A summary of all the requirements as afore-mentioned is provided below:
 Requirements to be satisfied by a legal translator:
 Accuracy and attention to detail;
 Knowledge of the legal systems, both of the source and target languages;
 Familiarity with the relevant legal terminology;
 Confidentiality;

19
  Timely delivery of translated documents.
(Translations Blog 2010)

In a word, it is vital that professional legal translators equip themselves with the right academic
background and practical experience in legal translation expertise to make Legal Translation less
demanding and more reachable.

2.5 Overview of Translation Training

Translation trainers/teachers seem to agree that there exists a difference between “translation in
foreign-language teaching” and “translation teaching for professional purposes” (Goussard-Kunz
2009: 16). While the former is merely a means to facilitate learners in understanding a text or to test
certain capabilities, i.e. grammar and vocabulary, in the foreign language, the latter is “an end in
itself” Menck (1991: 147-148), which is indeed a skill to be acquired on the basis of L1 and L2
proficiency (Nord 1991a: 140) (as quoted in Goussard_Kunz 2009: 17). Accordingly, translation
learners were once trained to achieve completely different training objectives as afore-said try not
to use legal structures / vocabulary in your own writing as it makes your prose very dense and not
reader-friendly and those who were trained to reach the former goal were not adequately aware of
“translational problems” as they were not given authentic texts to translate and “translation takes
place in a vacuum” with no “real communicative function” (Krings, as quoted in Menck 1991: 151).
Hӧnig and Kussmaul (as quoted in Menck 1991: 142) summarize the problem as follows:

Students translate a text they do not understand for an addressee they do not know. And the
product of their efforts is often marked by a teacher who does not have any practical
experience as a translator nor any theoretical knowledge in the field of translation studies.

With the primary focus on Legal Translation, this present study will not discuss in detail the
training objective which is “translation in foreign-language teaching”, but instead exploring
“translation teaching for professional purposes” by presenting an overview thereof as reported
through related literature.

Once Legal Translation-targeted training is examined under a microscope, a question is raised as to

what type of approach should be employed. According to Manganaras (n.d.), in outlining “the
educational policy for legal translation”, it is imperative to take into account not only the
contribution of law and language but also other economic and professional factors. Selcen and
Eryatmaz (2014: 71) take the view that Law as a discipline somehow covers all other disciplines

20
under its umbrella and also gives room for translation in the field to grow, owing to which a
translation student with no knowledge of Legal Translation would not be able to “provide an insight
in other courses and in his/her professional life” as well, adding that all translation processes are
more or less connected with legal field. Accordingly, Selcen and Eryatmaz (2014: 71) suggest to
“distill a functioning approach” as an extension of a key concept in theories relevant to translation,
“function”, for legal translation training. Taking Legal Translation courses carried out in Yaşar
University where the two researchers are working as an example, an “Introduction to Legal
Translation” course is constructed to help students accumulate knowledge on the field as well as to
provide insight about the notion of legal systems. The course is designed spiraling around a central
motif which is function, a part of which is to form basic knowledge of general and special legal
systems (Ibid., 72).

As Eruz indicates (2000: 92-97), legal documents has “a chain function” (a legal document
generates another process based of a different legal document), hence the need for a translator to
distinguish the function of the legal text in connection with the text type, for which reason students
should also be taught how to differentiate functions of legal texts (Selcen and Eryatmaz 2014: 72).
Legal Translation course, as a result, will demonstrate itself “not in mere template-based translation
practice but as a solidified action of translation” (Ibid.). The “Skopos” theory would help to provide
a clearer understanding of the so-called functionalist approach to teaching translation, as Vermeer
describes below:

Functionalist approach means that, whenever the “customer (auftraggeber)” “orders” or

“gives” a job (in auftrag geben), he has an aim and a target. Translation is expected to serve
the target culture, and naturally to target audience. The best possible translation is

determined by the norms during the process (Vermeer 2008: 4).

Each text is produced for a given purpose and should serve this purpose. The Skopos rule
thus reads as follows: translate/interpret/speak/write in a way that enables your
text/translation to function in the situation in which it is used and with people who want to

use it and precisely in the way they want it to function (in Nord 2007: 29).

With regard to translation competences with which a translation student should be equipped,
regardless of translation areas, Shaffner proposes a set of competences that comprise the following:

1. linguistic competence of the languages concerned;

21
 2. cultural competence, i.e. general knowledge about historical, political, economic, cultural,
etc. aspects in the respective countries;
3. textual competence, i.e. knowledge of regularities and conventions of texts, genres, text
types; 4.domain/subject specific competence, i.e. knowledge of the relevant subject, the area
of expertise;
5. re(search) competence, i.e. general strategy competence whose aim is the ability to
resolve problems specific to the crosscultural transfer of texts;
6. transfer competence, i.e. ability to produce target texts that satisfy the demands of the
translation task.
(Shaffner 2000: 146)

To sum up, it is believed that the functional approach is useful in translation training thanks to its
prominent strengths that help better prepare learners for “real-life translation situations” (Nord
1994a: 66). In Nord’s (1997: 117) opinion, this approach “facilitated a more profession-and
practice-oriented translator training and permitted the inclusion of a wide variety of activities
professional translators are asked to perform.” He additionally argues the functional approach is
consistent in that it can be applied to both literary and non-literary translation and utilized for any
type of text and language and cultural combination; this, therefore, renders the training of
translators “more rational, economical and independent of linguistic and cultural peculiarities”
(Nord 1994a: 66). In spite of the fact that several trainee translators remain intuitively in taking
translational decisions, functional translation theories provide them with a theoretical framework
based on which the translator is able to justify certain choices over others rationally
(Goussard_Kunz 2009: 27). Are there opposing views?

2.6 Empirical Research

In recent years, there has been an increasing amount of literature on Translation/Legal Translation
and its related issues with such specific studies as summarized in Al-Nakhalah (2013: 168). In
particular, Ludmila Stern’s (2004) research examined difficulties experienced by court interpreters
and the strategies they employed in coping with legal deliberations at the International Criminal
tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) with problems generated by the use and transfer of
cognates, synonyms and neologisms in legal language emphasized. In 2008, Farhaty considered
legal translation in theory and practice by reviewing the history of legal translation in the Western
and Arabic tradition and discussing the most popular difficulties lie in legal translation with
particular examples from English/Arabic/English legal texts. Lucja Biel in the same year (2008)

22
studied terminology mining in a small way that is used by legal freelance translators in practice, and
recent developments in this field. A few years later, the research conducted by Asma Abd-Allah
Halahla in 2010 focused on problems encountered by translators in translating Islamic Religious
texts when English lacks the equivalents and translators are forced to interpret rather than
translating the texts in a way that the original spirit or beauty of the original text is guaranteed.
Bader S. Dweik and Mariam M. Abu Shakra (2011) investigated the most serious problems faced
by the translators when rendering cultural collocations in three religious texts such as the Holy
Quran, the Hadith and the Bible, the results of which revealed that lexical and semantic collocations
are ones that cause difficulties and translators of religious texts should be well aware of the nature
of lexical and metaphoric collocations and should always avoid literal translation by taking the
context into consideration.

That Legal Translation has been constantly studied by researchers who have an interest in such
field is confirmed by the above studies together with other related literature presented elsewhere
herein. The studies’ findings, indeed, partly realize the assumptions which I have raised in my mind
when conducting this study that Legal Translation is quite a challenging translation area with
typical problems and difficulties that are hard to tackle overnight.

2.7 Conclusion

Serving as a theoretical framework for the whole study, this Chapter Two discusses key issues
attached to Legal Translation that entail Explanations of important Terms referred to throughout the
study; typical Features which Legal Translation possesses; noticeable pProblems and dDifficulties
do not use capital letters where they would not be used in a normal English sentence - this problem
is scattered through much of the thesis to here experienced by legal translators in doing their daily
work and last but not least, the Tertiary-Level Training of Translation/Legal Translation. Empirical
studies are also presented to give audience an overall comprehension of Legal Translation as well
as of what have been discovered in this field with clear findings. This Chapter Two additionally acts
as a base for me as the researcher to shape the Methodological Chapter following next.
In general a sound chapter but needs to be condensed

23
 CHAPTER THREE

METHODOLOGY

In conducting any studies on experiences unfolded through stories, narrative inquiry, ‘the study of
experience as story’ (Clandinin and Connelly 2006: 477), seems to be the most appropriate research
methodology to be adopted for gaining insights into the real experiences of real people, especially
those for whom professional development is an issue that matters (Watts 2005). Given my main
purposes for which this study is formed as introduced in Chapter One, no other research method but
narrative inquiry fits best when I am desirous to learn more about Vietnamese legal translators’
experiences through their employment at different law firms based in HCMC. What professional
stories would they share about their daily work? How do they view Legal Translation as an
occupation in HCMC legal context? Indeed, this study is aimed at seeking answers to the Research
Questions presented below:

1. What are the experiences of legal translators in Ho Chi Minh City?

2. Do translation courses in Ho Chi Minh City’s universities address the needs identified by
the legal translators in practice?

Concretely, I employed narrative inquiry methodology to study the experiences of 10 translators

coming from a number of HCMC-based reputable law firms. This Chapter is where I am about to
explain how narrative interviews which provide the main data source for the entire research were
conducted; how such qualitative data was analyzed; where I got access to the participants and who
they are precisely; how my role as a researcher and also a translator with my own stories to be told

24
affected my interpretation of the data; and, last but not least, how my study was conducted in an
ethical manner.

3.1 Research Design

Having referred to, along with this study’s nature, the theories relevant to narrative inquiry, or
narrative research, and its features elaborated in related literature, I decided to carry out my research
using this kind of methodology with separate stories from 11 legal translators woven together to
build an overall story after all through which audience will see a clearer picture of Legal
Translation and its connected issues.

Clandinin and Connelly (2000) perceive that “Humans are storytelling organisms who, individually
and collectively, lead storied lives,” or for a more comprehensible expression, people’s lives
embrace stories (Ma and Ren 2011: 531). From Clandinin’s observation (2007: xi-xii, as cited in
Ma and Ren 2011: 531), narrative research methodology has widely been utilized in a number of
particular professions such as medicine, law, counseling, psychotherapy, teaching, and so on.
Similar to other types of research methodologies applied by social science researchers, narrative
inquiry ““inquires” into or ask questions” about specific aspects of life experience to acquire a
profound understanding thereof (Ma and Ren 2011: 531).

“Experience happens narratively. Narrative inquiry is a form of narrative experience. Therefore,

educational experiences should be studied narratively.”
(Clandinin and Connelly 2000: 19)
(as cited in Cavendish 2011: 44)

Concurring with the two authors, researchers who advocate the use of narrative inquiry in education
and did have studies conducted that way comprise Bach (1998) whose research is on curriculum;
Huber and Whelan (2001) with studies in community; Craig (2001; 2003) in school reform; Bell
(2002) in language learning; Phillion and He (in press) in language teaching; Elbaz-Luwisch,
Gudmundsdottir, and Moen (2002) and Fenton (2002) in teaching; and Li (2002) and He (2003)
with cross-cultural research, to name a few.

The rationale behind my choice of narrative inquiry as the major methodology for this study mainly
generates from me myself as a legal translator who wishes to tell my own professional stories and,
concurrently, from my intense curiosity about experiences and professional lives of others doing the
same kind of job at other law firms in HCMC. In other words, it is my own working context, i.e.

25
law firms, that inspires me to research other law firms in which other legal translators are working.
In particular, I would like to know how their daily work is going; whether they are facing the same
problems and difficulties as I am; how they were and are trained to fit this job and to do their job
better; or whether or not they enjoy being a legal translator with reasons attached. Given the said
objectives, stories, a specific form of narrative research, can, on one hand, help me deeper
understand myself in terms of my professional life and, on the other hand, can open the way for me
to uncover life experiences and viewpoints of others. In fact, all those things were not studied for no
reason, but rather giving me good grounds for finding evidence for my assumptions about the
current status of Legal Translation and Translation Training at Tertiary Level in HCMC.

One of the major issues to be extensively explored in this research is experiences of legal translators
working in HCMC-based law firms. By reflecting my own and collecting narratives, mainly
professional ones, from another 10 translators, I would like to dig deeper into work life of people
like me to see how they are getting along at their firms; how their experiences accumulated through
their daily work shape their perception of Legal Translation; and what implications arise from those
stories. All the narratives that I collected were used as an avenue to examine real experiences of real
translators in a very real context that is legal context. It is this central issue that paves the way for
another issue to be discussed in this research also. More specifically, how I was and the others were
trained to be legal translators as we are today or what we have learnt to be competent enough for
this occupation is what I have to figure out and report in this study in parallel with the experiences
uncovered and this will be supported by all the facts revealed in the narratives.

3.2 Methods

Given the fact that the sources from which data is gathered will tell how valid and reliable such data
is, there comes a question to be answered by any researcher and I am no exception: “What kind, and
how much data will be collected?” (Hinchey 2008). As I expressly stated from the outset of this
Chapter, the major data source for this research is stories narrated by me and the other translators in
narrative interviews, then come legal instruments and translation training materials that act as
subordinating sources.

3.2.1 Narrative Interviews

26
McNamara (1999) contends that interviews are really helpful in discovering “the story behind a
participant’s experiences” and in securing in-depth information relevant to the topic. Since what I
have yearned to do is to bring experiences of legal translators to light, narrative interview is
absolutely a choice to make. Concerning types of interview in qualitative research, unstructured
interview and semi-structured interview are the two main types of which the latter has been chosen
in preference to the former thanks to its prominent strengths. As its name suggests, a semi-
structured interview is organized and structured but in a more open manner that allows “individual
diversity and flexibility” to have informative responses (Burns 2010: 85). Bearing features of both
structured and unstructured interview, a semi-structured interview still operates on the basis that the
interviewer, or the researcher, will prepare a list of fixed pertinent questions, and yet there will be
room for follow-up questions to have unclear answers further explained or clarified, subject to the
interviewees’ specific responses that emerge in the course of interviews. Well aware of such key
characteristics of semi-structured interviews and as my narrative interviews are semi-structured, I
did produce a list by first searching relevant literature (i.e. Frequently Asked Questions About Court
and Legal Interpreting and Translating; and Translator Interview Questions) to visualize what I
should ask and then by adapting the questions that I thought appropriate to my own situation to
build the list. Having discussed with and obtained approval for the list from my Supervisor, I
eventually had a set of 22 questions that mostly covers significant aspects of Legal Translation,
which is attached hereto as Appendix A. All of the questions were designed totally open-ended and
using common language of daily life for ease of understanding as generally agreed by most
qualitative researchers (Elliot 2005; Creswell 2007; Sunstein & Chiseri-Strater 2007; Merriam
2009; Glesne 2011, as cited in Cavendish 2011: 46). As per this research’s purposes, the questions
used in my narrative interviews were formed to explore three main types of information: (a) the
translators’ past and present translation training; (b) the translators’ experiences in Legal
Translation; and (c) the translators’ attitudes towards Legal Translation. In other words, I will have
the interviewees’ stories of translation education, stories of working in law companies, and stories
of feelings on translation job in legal context.

27
After the interview questions were ready to be delivered, I contacted all 10 translators and arranged
interviews at our best convenience. Subject to each participant’s availability, I either arranged to
meet them individually in person or kept in touch with them and had the questions answered via
email during the whole process. In fact, I tried to conduct as many face-to-face interviews as
possible to gain thorough information from the participants but, in some special cases when the
translators were too busy to meet, online interviews work best. One important thing worth
mentioning here is to obtain consent from all the participants before interview sessions actually
happen and I succeeded in doing that in a proper and ethical manner as my proposal had been
passed by the ethics board of Victoria University earlier (see Appendix B and C for Consent and
Information Form to Participants). With respect to face-to-face interviews, I could meet 8 out of 10
translators personally to hear their stories. Basically, each session lasted about an hour but some
extended longer than the scheduled time when the storytellers felt an interest to share more stories.
Many researchers agree that it is not easy to have participants share their stories and experiences
with them for this requires great trust and mutual respect (Fetterman 1998; Clandinin and Connelly
2000; Glesne 2011, as cited in Cavendish 2011: 47), hence the need for a good rapport to be built
among all involved. As the interviewer who is well aware that how critical it is to establish a good
rapport between the interviewer and interviewees, I tried to develop a friendly relationship with all
the interviewees in advance through conversations on phone and by email and when the moment
came, I used my best endeavors to maintain all interview sessions in a cozy and comfortable
atmosphere and be a good listener who listened to their stories respectfully. Furthermore, I was
conscious of my role as a legal translator during the course of interviews to not have any
preconceived notions of what the translators would tell me or to avoid any leading questions to get
the answer I want. I also tried not to interrupt the interviewees to have narratives naturally rise from
our conversations, as Elliot (2005) recommended (as cited in Cavendish 2011: 46). Operated that
way, all of the 8 individual interviews were successfully conducted thanks to good rapport between
the researcher and each participant that I attempted to develop from the beginning. Additionally, my
understanding of the issues shared by the participants was a plus point when I could intake and
reflect rather precisely what the translators wanted to express, giving them a feeling that their
professional stories are properly and fully understood by the one who asked them to share. Most of
the individual interviews took place in cafeterias at lunch time, after work or even at weekends
when the parties involved were available to meet and I always tried to arrange my time to meet their
busy schedules in most cases. I believed in such a stress-free atmosphere, together with our rather
good relationship formed prior to real interviews, the interviewees could freely narrate their work-
related stories and even their personal life to the extent they think appropriate. I was totally right

28
when all of the interviews went smoothly and we talked and shared things like friends who knew
each other long ago. To ensure the interviewees’ responses are captured in their own terms as well
as to serve a detailed analysis of data later on, the recording of conversations in all interview
sessions is, to all intents and purposes, mandatory (Interviewing in Qualitative Research, n.d., p.
317). Accordingly, I always asked the participants if I could record our conversations before getting
started and, luckily, most of them nodded approval. Still, as I was afraid that I could not catch up
with the translators’ stories if they talked so fast without pausing, I both took note of what they said
and let the recording run concurrently so that I could promptly raise follow-up questions as
necessary to have more details and to minimize the risk of losing data.

Regarding the other 2 translators who could not offer me a direct talk, I worked with them through
email. First, I sent them an introductory email stating who I am, what my project is about, and how
they can help me to complete it. I certainly need their consent as well before proceeding with the
next step so I asked and they agreed to help by following my instructions, which is in fact a matter
of research ethics. Upon receipt of their agreement, I then sent them the questions for them to insert
their answers and send them back to me. A drawback of this ‘blind’ process is that the interviewees
work independently while answering all the questions, which may result in the possibility that some
questions may not be understood correctly unless the interviewer gives further explanations. To
subdue this shortcoming, before sending out the list, I provided detailed explanations to any
questions therein that I believe hard to understand and gave illustrations when necessary to ensure
the translators know exactly what I mean. What is more, I noted that they may need to modify their
responses after I check and find that it is necessary to do so in the case where their answers did not
adequately cover the issues in question. This really happened when I received the list back and saw
that certain answers are too short or too general to reflect the issue comprehensively, so I then asked
them to further clarify or explain the point and re-send me the updated list. That was how my online
interviews were conducted and again I succeeded in getting rather comprehensive replies with no
face-to-face conversations taken place.

Table 3.1 below summarizes the entire interview process.

29
 Participant Form of Number of Number Number of Hours of Total
Interview Face-to- of Online Recorded Interview of Interview
Face Interview Interview (approximately) Session
Interview
Translator 1 Face-to-face 1 N/A 1 35 minutes 1
Translator 2 Face-to-face 1 N/A 1 46 minutes 1
Translator 3 Face-to-face 1 N/A (refusing to 1 hour and a half 1
be recorded)
Translator 4 Online N/A 2 N/A N/A 2
Translator 5 Face-to-face 1 N/A 1 1 hour 1
Translator 6 Face-to-face 1 N/A 1 1 hour and a half 1
Translator 7 Face-to-face 1 N/A 1 50 minutes 1
Translator 8 Online N/A 2 N/A N/A 2
Translator 9 Face-to-face 1 N/A (refusing to 40 minutes 1
be recorded)
Translator 10 Face-to-face 1 N/A (refusing to 1 hour and 45 1
be recorded)
minutes

30
 Table 3.1: Summary of Interview Process

The most remarkable achievement I have attained through the whole process of narrative interviews
is that my relationship with the translators survives the completion of my project. More particularly,
I still stay in touch with them via email, meet for lunch or a drink after work sometimes, or ask
them for advice on how to translate a strange or difficult term/phrase/sentence in a document I am
dealing with though we are working for different law firms, and they are always willing to help and
seek my advice in return.

3.2.2 Legal Instruments

Working in a law firm means dealing with legal instruments, or legal documents, on a daily basis.
Types of legal instruments vary from firm to firm, e.g. agreements, contracts, engagement letters,
notices, memoranda, and so on, subject to particular practice areas on which each law company
focuses. Given this context, main duties of a legal translator is to translate legal documents from the
source language to the target language or review the translation of any legal documents at lawyers’
request and send the reviewed product back for lawyers’ final review. It is true to say legal
instruments are a specific tool that demonstrates and also helps evaluate a legal translator’s
performance, and, additionally, they are where professional stories of a legal translator are revealed.
For this reason, legal instruments will write up in the past tense be no doubt utilized as another
source of data besides narrative interviews for my research, which will certainly better support
ideas, opinions or arguments arisen out of the translators’ stories. As a matter of confidentiality, I
could not have many samples of legal documents from other law firms so I will use mine for the
most part and some other documents that the participants used to illustrate their stories. Although
the content and wording of such documents may differ in each firm, the legal nature still exists in
each document of this kind, by which it means the legal instruments that are being used in my firm
can also represent other legal documents used by other firms.

3.2.3 Translation Training Materials

31
Translator training, apart from experiences of legal translators, is another issue of paramount
importance to this study. To have the training of the translators reflected lively through this study, it
is imperative for me to take a close look at materials applied at their universities when they were
students. In other words, materials utilized for translation training at tertiary level will be my third
data source to be analyzed and discussed in detail in Chapter Five. Except for the materials serving
translation practice in the past, I will also consider materials that are being employed at the present
time in other universities so the audience will know the translation training currently received by
students of this major.

3.3 Data Analysis

“Qualitative analysis transforms data into findings. No formula exists for that transformation. Guidance,
yes. But no recipe. Direction can and will be offered, but the final destination remains unique for each
inquirer, known only when – and if – arrived at.”
(Michael Quinn Patton 2002: 432)
(as cited in Schutt 2012: 321)

As LeCompte (2010: 146) points out in her article titled “Analyzing Qualitative Data”, “big piles”
of collected data will be transformed into concrete findings that give descriptions and explanations
of, or prediction about, what the researcher has studied. This section is going to elaborate such
transformation process.

3.3.1 Initial Data Organization

To facilitate my analysis of data upon completion of all narrative interviews, I forthwith transcribed
the data I had collected after each interview, whether individual or online one, was done for easy
reference when I proceed with the coding later. Obviously, this step helped me tidy up my raw data
to better serve next steps. In particular, as there are 10 interviews, I prepared in advance 10 lists of
questions, each of which include all 22 interview questions with blank space below each question so
that I could insert respective answers when they are provided (see Appendix D). In doing this again
and again until the responses of 10 translators were fully recorded in writing, I could see the
similarities and differences arisen out of all replies but, more importantly, I could familiarize myself
with the content of the data and understand the “themes” and particulars in the text. For ease of
understanding and to have key points stood out, I merely picked key issues of the interviews to put
in the list and eliminated all utterances that are irrelevant to the study’s topic. Once this was
finished, coding of data began.

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3.3.2 Coding

Defined as “a progressive process of sorting and defining and defining and sorting those scraps of
collected data…that are applicable to your research purpose” (Glesne 2011: 194, as cited in
Cavendish 2011: 54), coding is considered the first and perhaps the most critical process for the
analysis “gravitated towards” exploring the content of the qualitative data (Punch 2005: 193, as
cited in Gocer 2010: 201). As the coding process is deemed “the crux of qualitative analysis”
(Powell and Renner 2003: 2), I made every effort to complete the coding, or indexing, of the data as
satisfactorily as possible so that I could have clear and meaningful codes for each category at the
end.

To give a detailed description of the procedure, I shall begin with my initial data coding. First, I did
a close reading of text to see what was happening therein and created codes based on what the data
actually showed. Lines of information were scanned through and I used gerunds to describe any
actions taken by participants in their stories and different kinds of phrases for other ‘action-free’
responses. For instance, I used such gerund phrases as ‘attending law school, self-studying, making
a glossary of legal terms’ to describe specific actions that certain translators have taken to better
support their job, or such noun phrases as ‘written communication, reading comprehension,
attention to details’ to reflect some skills and qualities that the participants think necessary for a
legal translator. Those are also some of my initial codes. Such coding process continued until all
raw text or information is assigned specific codes or labels.

The next stage is creating categories by looking for data informing the category from the codes
initially formed. In fact, most of my interview questions convey clear and specific themes, i.e. skills
and qualities of legal translator, translators’ translation training, problems and difficulties of Legal
Translation, to name a few, so that the translators can answer straight to the point, rather than
beating around the bush. Designed that way, the interview questions themselves provide, whether
directly or indirectly, certain categories or themes and what I have to do next is to search for
concrete segments of data that fit perfectly into each particular category, and then sub-categories
will be shaped accordingly.

An example of categorization of data is shown in Table 3.2 below.

33
 Question Categories Codes/Labels
Skills Language skills:
 Written communication
Sub-codes
 Reading comprehension
Analytical skills:
 Collecting information on the Internet
Sub-codes
 Analyzing collected information
What skills and qualities do you
need in your work as a legal
translator (Please specify why Qualities Attention to details
you need such skills/qualities)? Accuracy
Carefulness
Legal knowledge:
 Legal terminologies
 Legal systems of source Sub-codes
language and target language

34
 Table 3.2: Illustration of Data Categorization (Adapted from Powell and Renner 2003: 3)

The above table somewhat illustrates my data categorizing process. When a category emerges, I
will look for subtopics, comprising both contradictory and similar viewpoints as well as new
insights and to have arguments or explanations convincingly presented later on when I discuss my
findings, I also search for appropriate quotes from the participants’ responses that communicate the
essence of a theme or a category. It should be noted that some questions (i.e. Question 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
and 8) merely address one major theme, translators’ training, thus it is possible that one segment of
text may be put into more than one category if it fits other categories as well.

3.3.3 Narratives

In answering my questions in the interviews, the translators told their stories. In particular, once
they wanted to give as specific answers as possible, they told stories; once they wanted to explain a
point they were trying to say, they told stories; or once they wanted to express their own thinking
about a particular matter in question, they told stories. To take one example, when the following
question was raised: “In your experience, have you ever come across a case that was appealed
because of a translator issue?”, a male experienced translator told me a specific story about his
junior teammate, i.e. how the case occurred and how he dealt with the client’s complaint against his
teammate in the capacity of a senior translator. In summary, narratives emerged forthwith in the
course of interviews and what I, as an enquirer, should do in such process is to encourage the
participants to share their stories freely and comfortably so I could gain a deeper understanding of
the issues that I aim to study.

To recapitulate briefly, once my qualitative data generated from 10 interviews’ transcripts was
ready for analysis stage, I first proceeded with the initial coding of such data by reading and re-
reading the text carefully, marking meaningful segments of text, and assigning respective codes or
labels. I continued this process until all segments of text are identified and coded, which stage is
known as ‘Open Coding’ (Strauss and Corbin 1990, as cited in Kawulich, n.d.). Next, I formed
categories based on certain themes appeared in most of my questions and fit the codes initially
constructed into respective categories and sub-categories were also shaped at the same time (Axial
Coding) (Kawulich, n.d). It is essential that I had relied on my own list of classified data showing
all the codes that I had developed in the course of coding to finish my data analysis with all relevant
data fully covered.

35
In addition to narrative interviews that are my primary data source, legal instruments and translation
training materials are another two sources of data that are deemed indispensable for my research.
Through analyzing certain typical types of legal documents currently used in my law firm as well as
a number of translation training materials presently applied in some universities, a more obvious
picture of Legal Translation and translation training will be presented in front of the readers’ eyes.

3.4 Research Setting and Participants

3.4.1 Law Firms in HCMC

Narrative researchers often “describe in detail the setting or context in which the participant experiences the
central phenomenon”
(Creswell 2008: 522)

Creswell (2008: 522) suggests that the setting of a narrative research may comprise “the
participant’s workplace, home, social organization, or school. It is the place where “a story
physically occurs.”” As the principle focus of my study is on legal translators and their work life,
law firms are no doubt my research setting although I made no visit to any of them during my data
collecting phase, except for my own law firm. At present, there are several law firms, including
both local and foreign ones, operating proactively in HCMC and it is expected that there will be
more and more law companies to be established in the future, given increasing market demands on
provision of legal services upon Vietnam’s entry into WTO since 2007 you have mentioned this in
several places – cutting out repletion will really help the word count. Back to my research, the
translators I had approached for interview come from eight [8] different law firms, including four
[4] foreign and four [4] local firms of various scales. I would like to note here that there are some
translators working at the same company; that is why there are only 8 firms while I interviewed 10
translators in total. To sum up, I have nine [9] law firms, comprising my own one, in the list and I
could admit that stories about these law firms narrated by the translators working thereat help me
visualize to some extent how a law firm runs its business and manage its staff. For the sake of
convenience, all the firms are located in office buildings or towers in the city centre and there is a
variety of means of transport to get there.

3.4.2 Legal Translators

36
All 10 translators interviewed have practical experience in Legal Translation, ranging from at least
2 years to 9 years max. Among the five ones coming from foreign law firms, two are from a
prestigious U.S law firm that has operated in Vietnam for around 20 years; two are from renowned
law firms founded in France and one is from the largest law firm established in Malaysia. The rest
are working at some domestically founded law companies that are also famous for their services.
All of the translators have good command of English which is a requisite for their job, yet some of
them are translators of distinction who demonstrate a vast knowledge of a variety of areas and a rich
vocabulary. Though they all majored in English at universities or colleges, not all chose translation
to go further but in fact some selected to be teachers of English; some wanted to be professional
translators; and some opted to pursue English for tourism, trade or business for other purposes. This
depends on particular translation training programs applied at each particular university or college
as well as on the participants’ own free will at that time. With the aim of collecting diverse
experiences of legal translators, I made every effort to seek out translators with varied backgrounds
and experience, yet my limited social relationships hindered me from doing that. To put it another
way, as I do not know many people from other law firms where I can reach translators for my
project, I asked my friends who are lawyers to help introduce me to translator(s) they know or asked
the translators I already interviewed to recommend another or other ones that they have connection.
It is such dependence on my friends’ relationships that restricted me to actively looking for
translators with diverse backgrounds and experience. Nevertheless, it was fortunate for me that the
translators I met did provide me with valuable and diverse information, by means of which I could
reflect differing experiences of legal translators in the end. Put the information about the 10 next

Then explain this bit afterwards Since it is hardly possible for me to talk about all 10 translators in
this study, given its limited scope, I would rather share stories of mine and of another three
translators from three different law firms to form the substance hereof. That is not to say stories of
the remaining translators will be deemed redundant but instead playing a supporting role in
evidencing facts or arguments developed from the narratives of the four key translators. For the
translators’ own sake, I will not use their real names but rather coding them as Translator 1 (T1),
Translator 2 (T2)… till Translator 10 (T10) and those labels will be used throughout the paper. The
three translators are…… and since you summarise these three here you should also summarise
yourself here too – use some of the text you have in your later description

37
 Translator 2 (T2): She has a promising career as she is currently working at a reputable U.S
law firm with offices located worldwide. Also, this is perhaps the largest foreign law firm operating
in Vietnam with more than 100 employees. Although she is younger than me, she is more
experienced in Legal Translation with two years working for a local law company and five years
for the foreign law firm as aforesaid. I was introduced to her by a lawyer at my current firm who
was her former colleague and I was lucky again when she agreed to participate in my project with
pleasure and was even luckier when she is the one who helped me find Translator 3 as below
mentioned. Possessing a Bachelor Degree in English Translation and Interpretation, she has worked
as a full-time legal translator at her present firm and a freelance translator on demand as well. As
we are doing the same kind of job and she is younger, the way she shared her stories is like she was
having a friendly talk between sisters and colleagues without feeling stressful or worried as what an
interviewee may feel in the course of interview. Concerning her extra academic education, she
already gained her second degree in Law from HCMULAW and is attending the lawyer
certification course in one year’s time at the Judicial Academy in HCMC to be a real lawyer in the
future.

Translator 3 (T3): He owns seven years’ experience in Legal Translation and is now
working for a renowned French law firm in HCMC as both a legal translator and a lawyer.
Graduated as an English major from the University of Social Sciences and Humanities (the USSH)
in 1999 and from the Foreign Trade University (the FTU) in 2000 as a graduate of International
Business, he continued to study Law in HCMC University of Law (HCMULAW) and earned his
third degree in 2008. With such a wide range of knowledge, he is a translator of distinction who has
successfully accomplished his translation work on a daily basis. He additionally works as a
qualified lawyer at his firm and is currently a member of Ho Chi Minh City Bar Association after
being granted Practicing Certificate in 2013. It is his considerable expertise that makes him a great
credit to his current firm. In fact, he is not a friend of mine but of a translator (T2) I had met before
I met him. It was she who introduced him to me, and I have quickly found that I am so lucky to
know him. Upon knowing my project from his friend, he was perfectly willing to help me by
immediately responding to my emails and doing what I asked him to do in order for his
participation in my project to be legal. When we met in person at a cafeteria after exchanging
emails and necessary information, he shared with me his professional stories freely and thoroughly
and our conversation went on longer than scheduled.

38
 Translator 10 (T10): The third legal translator to be mentioned herein is another translator of
distinction with seven-year experience in the field and his firm has been known as one of the first
business law firms to have been formed in Vietnam after 1975. Majoring in Language Pedagogy at
university, he earned his living as an English teacher for a few years before choosing Legal
Translation to go further when he found this occupation suits him better. He is the last translator I
interviewed among 10 as he always has a huge workload to cope with every day and it was quite
hard for me to arrange an interview with him as a result. Nevertheless, he was a fervent participant
who tried to arrange his time to share with me his stories personally, rather than answering my
questions online, regardless of his hectic schedule. Once again, he is not my friend initially but I
knew him through the lawyer who introduced me to Translator 2. Upon being briefly introduced to
him, I actively approached him and asked him for help, and after a long delay for days, we finally
had a stimulating conversation at a cozy cafeteria after work hours where he left his interesting
stories unfolded.

Now a similar length summary about you

Put this higher up Information about 10 translators is briefly summarized in the following Table.

Years of
Experience in
Translator Educational Background Current Working Place
Legal
Translation
Translator 1 BA in English 5 Vietnamese Law Firm
Translator 2 BA in English 7 U.S Law Firm
LLB
Translator 3 BA in English 7 French Law Firm
BA in International
Business
LLB
Translator 4 BA in English 2 Vietnamese Law Firm
Translator 5 BA in English 4 Malaysian Law Firm
Translator 6 BA in English 6 Vietnamese Law Firm
Translator 7 BA in English 9 U.S Law Firm
LLB
Translator 8 BA in English 6 Vietnamese Law Firm
Translator 9 BA in English 14 French Law Firm
Translator 10 BA in English 7 Vietnamese Law Firm

Table 3.3: Information of Participants

3.5 Cautions about Narrative Inquiry

39
In order to “safeguard” the integrity of studies conducted using narrative inquiry research method,
narrative researchers are highly recommended to identify and tell their own stories regarding “their
own backgrounds, intentions and purposes” for implementing the study (Clandinin and Connelly
2000: 93, as cited in Jervis 2009: 13). As a narrative inquiry researcher, I am no exception and I did
include my own narratives herein as a consequence. It is undeniable that inserting my own stories
into the study possibly gives rise to subjective points of view developed by me myself, and,
therefore, controlling my own “subjectivity or the effects of self” (Glesne 2011, as cited in
Cavendish 2011: 63) and also my “intersubjectivity” (Cavendish 2011: 63) in my research becomes
vital. This means I have to be cognizant of both my own bias and those of the participants involved
and how our interactions affect the research process and data (Ibid.). Nonetheless, maintaining
objectivity is not an ultimate goal in carrying out my narrative research, but sharing and analyzing
my own experiences and stories matters. Several researchers agree that narrative research stresses
the importance of exploring the researcher’s own “personal narratives” (Clandinin and Connelly
2000; Phillion 2002; He 2002; Lyons and Labosky 2002, as cited in Cavendish 2011: 63). In brief,
it would be perhaps more relevant and useful to discuss the integrity, research ethics as well as the
“researcher reflexivity” in narrative research rather than objectivity (Jervis 2009: 13). From Luttrell
(2000: 500) (as cited in Jervis 2009: 13), researcher reflexivity involves “describing (1) how your
own background affects your relationship, identifications, and exchanges with your participants, as
well as (2) the decisions that you make about analyzing and representing data during the research
process, and what is lost, and what is gained as a result.” Lastly, to avoid information omissions, I
always encouraged the participants to share as much as possible their professional stories and asked
if I had missed anything in the course of interview that I should have included in my research.

3.6 Conclusion

Narrative is about understanding the complexities of experience, honoring the subtleties of experience, and
understanding the dynamics between individual experience and contexts that shape experience. Narrative
reaches out to the past, is rooted in the present, and turns an eye to the future; narrative evolves with
changes and shifts in time, place, and interactions. Narrative, as both phenomenon and form of inquiry, is a
perspective that provides illuminating ways of viewing the world.
(Phillion 2002: 20)

Resulting from my own preoccupation with Legal Translation and my insatiable curiosity about
how legal translators like me work and live, I insisted on conducting a study on experiences of legal
translators and narrative inquiry methodology perfectly suits my stated purposes. This Chapter

40
Three furnishes the readers with information about material respects relevant to my research
methodology, comprising research design, data collection methods, analysis of data, setting and
recruitment of participants, and cautions about applying narrative inquiry that the study may
encounter with solutions provided. The next Chapter is designed for stories of mine and of another
three key translators (T2, T3 and T10) as afore-mentioned begin.

CHAPTER FOUR

STORIES OF LEGAL TRANSLATORS

“At the heart of any story are the people and their lives.”

(Cavendish 2011: 1)

As elaborated in Chapter Three, in implementing this project, it is requisite for me to approach legal
translators from other law firms for help and I have been incredibly fortunate to be welcomed into
stories of ten legal translators from eight different law firms. All of them generously agreed to
participate in the project in spite of their heavy schedule. Their willingness to take a risk with their
stories shared with me is the deciding factor that gives life to this study. Before narrating their
stories, though, it is essential to share my own.

4.1 My Story try to make every story similar length – yours is much longer so do cut it down –

you can use some of the examples from it in the thematic analysis section

4.1.1 Translation Education

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Following the completion of high school, I did English Language as my undergraduate degree at Ho
Chi Minh City Open University (HCMCOU) as English Language back then was the only major
offered by the University’s Faculty of Foreign Languages and I chose English Translation and
Interpretation to move forward. This was truly a momentous decision that shaped my entire life. I
enjoyed the course immensely and my passion for English was also developed since then. It is such
lifelong passion that urged me to study hard and my high final grades demonstrate my constant
efforts. Besides the University’s course, I also attended extra classes in the evening in English
Grammar at elementary to advanced level and in translation of both the local and foreign press
during years of university. For press-based translation training, I learned to translate into
Vietnamese English articles on a foreign newspaper in such various fields as economy, finance,
environment, medicine, to name a few, and translated into English Vietnamese brief news on a
Vietnamese newspaper. It was such extra translation training provided by a good teacher that helped
to vastly improve my translation skills. I graduated in 2006 as the second highest ranked student of
the Faculty and this significantly assisted my future career in translation.

4.1.2 My First Translation Job

My first translation job came to me when I was a second-year undergraduate student and it turned
out to be a highly rewarding experience that I have ever had. By that time, a Vietnamese publisher
based in HCMC was looking for part-time editors and translators who would be in charge of editing
and translating books for self-development, entertainment and solutions for real life obstacles with
flexible working hours and environment. Book Translation was quite a new area to me at that time
as my course merely provided basic translation training without any specialized translation
included; still I decided to take my chances. All the applicants were given two kinds of documents,
i.e. a Vietnamese translation of a book chapter and an English short story, and our task was to edit
the Vietnamese translation and translate the short story into Vietnamese. We were given one week
to finish both the requirements and I was fortunate enough to submit the task in time but it was no
doubt a tough test to take. In taking the test, I was not certain of being selected, given my limited
translation knowledge at the time, I was chosen though as a part-time translator who would translate
English books comprising short stories as specifically assigned by the publisher. That was really a
glorious feeling that a second-year student of English major could feel and it was hard to tell how
happy I was about hearing such amazing news. At first, the publisher gave me a whole book of
different short stories and asked me to choose any stories that inspire me to translate at my absolute
discretion. Although I translated a few stories only in such manner, my work satisfied the publisher

42
and they asked me to take responsibility for translating the entirety of other similar books as a
result. I could not exactly express how joyful and surprising I was, but it was one of the proudest
moments of my life, to be sure. Becoming a book translator at the age of 22 when I was just an
undergraduate was quite an experience, especially when I saw my name printed solemnly on each
book upon its publication or when I saw someone read or buy any books translated by me at
bookstores. During a period of five years, from 2004 to 2009, working as a book translator, I had
seven [07] books published and reprinted regularly by the publisher but more importantly, I lived a
meaningful life thanks to such invaluable experience.

4.1.3 A Professional Legal Translator

August, 2011
It was 6:00 am when I received a call from my former teacher who taught me English Translation
and Interpretation. His call surprised me really as we had not kept in contact with each other for a
few years and we were working in different areas when the call came. I was a lecturer of English at
the time while he was a chief legal translator of a Vietnamese law firm. Given the firm’s heavy
workload, he sensed a need to have one more junior translator to support him in his daily work and I
was thought to be an appropriate candidate for the post even though I had never involved in Legal
Translation before. What concerned me most was my lack of experience in Legal Translation as
well as knowledge of the field. As above mentioned in my educational background, what I learned
at HCMCOU was purely basic translation and interpretation with no specialized translation
provided and my extra knowledge of press-based translation was of no help in this case also while
Legal Translation was the one in demand.

September, 2011
I started my first day at my very first law firm on September 05 th, 2011. Upon receiving my first
translation task on the day, a look of panic crossed my face. Several English words in the document
were like strangers staring at me as I had never seen them before and although I was familiar with
some of those words, I could not understand even a single sentence since the words convey totally
different meanings in legal context. To take one example, the following simple sentence did scare
me when I first saw it: “The Mortgagor enters into this Agreement in connection with the Onshore
Facility Agreement (as defined below).” First, I did not know certain words in the sentence, e.g.
Mortgagor and Onshore Facility Agreement. Second, from what I already knew about such words
as enter into (take part in), agreement (the state of sharing the same opinion or feeling), connection

43
(link), and facilities (buildings, services, equipment, etc. that are provided for a particular purpose),
I believed I could not apply such meanings as provided in parentheses to this context for they turned
out to be inappropriate or meaningless. I was even more frightened when I could not look up
appropriate meanings of the above words/phrases, e.g. Onshore Facility Agreement, in normal
language dictionaries. Hopelessly, I could not do anything in such situation but asking my superior
for help and it was so lucky that I have one. To help me familiarize myself with legal terminologies
as well as legal context, he sent me a glossary of terminologies that he has accumulated and updated
on a regular basis over years of his employment as a legal translator. He additionally sent me a
Vietnamese template for the document I was handling so that I could refer to it for the standard
form of Vietnamese wording for this kind of legal document. Back to the above example, all the
strange terms became clearer after I got the glossary and the template: Mortgagor (an individual or
company who borrows money to purchase a piece of real property) and there is a fixed Vietnamese
term for it, i.e. “Bên Thế Chấp”; enter into (to sign); agreement (contract); in connection with
(connected with somebody/something); and Onshore Facility Agreement (domestic loan
agreement), and the whole sentence could then be understood as follows: The Mortgagor sign this
Agreement/Contract connected with the Domestic Loan Agreement (as defined below). In a word, I
did experience Legal Translation first-hand in my first day at work, through which I became more
aware of how challenging my job is as well as how essential for me to familiarize myself with legal
context and terminologies as fast as I can. Thanks to the glossary from my superior, high frequency
of similar legal templates, and my huge efforts, I was able to do my job more smoothly a month
later, October 2011, once I was more acquainted with terminologies frequently used in my firm and
also the Vietnamese wording of a number of agreements/contracts. Still, I had to learn day after day
upon encountering new terminologies and new contexts and, at the same time, build and update my
own glossary of terms, a priceless treasure of every legal translator, on a daily basis.

October, 2011 to Present

My employment at my first law firm lasted from September, 2011 to September, 2013. I did acquire
considerable knowledge relevant to legal industry and its belongings, but most importantly, my
translation skills and also such other skills and qualities as are essential for a legal translator were
greatly developed during such two years. That was because Legal Translation involves a number of
different factors. Specifically, I always had a great deal to do to fulfill any translation tasks in the
most satisfactory manner, and it was a difficult process to go through indeed. Apart from
terminologies, lengthy sentences with strange or difficult structures, legal knowledge and
background knowledge of a particular area were other tough challenges faced by this brand new

44
legal translator in dealing with any legal document at the time. As regards terminologies, most of
the time I hardly found appropriate meanings on language online dictionaries like Oxford, Longman
or Cambridge. Thus, I had to search thoroughly on Google, namely through Black’s Law
Dictionary, Investopedia, BusinessDictionary.com, and other sites reflecting the terms/expressions,
until the meaning or explanation that was deemed most appropriate to the context is found. A good
example of this is the ‘Investopedia’. When I looked up the word ‘indemnity’ on Investopedia, I
found the following:

DEFINITION of 'Indemnity'
Compensation for damages or loss. Indemnity in the legal sense may also refer to an exemption
from liability for damages. The concept of indemnity is based on a contractual agreement made
between two parties, in which one party agrees to pay for potential losses or damages caused by
the other party. A typical example is an insurance contract, whereby one party (the insurer)
agrees to compensate the other (the insured) for any damages or losses, in return for premiums
paid by the insured to the insurer.

INVESTOPEDIA EXPLAINS 'Indemnity'

Indemnity may be paid in the form of cash, or by way of repairs or replacement, depending on
exactly what is spelled out in the indemnity agreement.

(Investopedia, http://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/indemnity.asp)

It is undeniable that the site provides clear and detailed explanation of the term with specific context
included so that there will not be a single misunderstanding about such term. Likewise, other
websites as named above work the same way and from my own experience, they are good and
reliable sources for searching terminologies in a variety of fields. Such extensive search was time-
consuming and tiring truly; this process, nevertheless, opened up the access to a variety of useful
websites that greatly supported my job in a way that I would translate more smoothly once I fully
grasped the meaning of all terminologies and, in the meantime, my legal and background
knowledge of the field I was dealing with was also considerably broadened. Another significant
advantage brought by this process was that my searching skills remarkably improved, resulting in
more effective translation with lesser time consumed just in the first year of my employment at the
firm. Aside from the sustainable development of the above-said searching abilities, I simultaneously
had opportunities to sharpen other practical and necessary skills that the position requires, i.e.
reading comprehension and analytical skills to get the precise meaning of extremely long sentences
with odd or difficult structures:

45
 “Negative pledge: The Guarantor will not, and will not permit any Significant Subsidiary to,
directly or indirectly, incur, assume or permit to exist any Lien of any nature whatsoever on any
of its assets or properties of any kind, whether owned on the date of this Agreement or
thereafter acquired, to secure any Relevant Indebtedness, except Permitted Liens, unless the
Guarantor’s obligations to the Finance Parties rights under [the Guarantee][the Finance
Documents] are secured equally and ratably with (or, if the obligation or liability to be secured
by such Lien is subordinated in right of payment to the Guarantor’s obligations under [the
Guarantee][the Finance Documents], prior to) the obligation or liability secured by such
Lien.”
(Quoted from a “Pledge Agreement”)

This lengthy sentence reflects one of the most typical features of legal instruments, the use of long
sentences with phrases alternated with phrases to have the drafter’s ideas fully covered, and the
more frequently I coped with them, the more substantially my reading comprehension and
analytical skills improved as a result.

It cannot be argued that my translation skills and other skills relating thereto grew parallel to each
other in my two years’ time at my first law firm. This period also brought me practical and
invaluable experience in Legal Translation that I would never earn from my university’s translation
training. In other words, my first law firm was where I grew up into a good and professional legal
translator with sufficient skills and qualities that a legal translator needs to achieve success in legal
industry. These were also what I brought with me to my second and also my current working place,
a UK law firm of international renown.

To make a brief summary of my story, I have been growing into my new role as a professional legal
translator over three years working in the field even though Legal Translation was of no interest to
me at all before I received my teacher’s call that day. With merely three years of experience, I dare
not say I am a translator of distinction for the time being, compared to other experienced and skilled
legal translators I met. Nonetheless, I have been trying my best to get my work done to the
satisfaction of both the firm and clients and the fact that I have outperformed my superior at the
present firm demonstrates how hard I have tried to survive Legal Translation over such three years.
Furthermore, as an employee with an enquiring mind, I have never stopped learning to be more and
more confident and professional in the position I am holding.

4.2 The Story of Translator 2

46
4.2.1 Educational Background

Translator 2 (T2) started her student life as an English major in 2005 at the Industrial University of
Ho Chi Minh City (the IUH) and graduated from the IUH in 2009 with English Translation and
Interpretation as her main major. She took a degree in Law at HCMULAW on the same year and
finished the course in 2013. Now she is attending the Legal Practice Course at HCMC Judicial
Academy as a requisite requirement for those who want to become lawyers in accordance with the
Vietnamese laws. Four years younger than me, T2 owns two Bachelor Degrees though and will
soon become an attorney at law with more opportunities to move farther in her professional career.

4.2.2 A Professional Legal Translator

As same as me, T2 began her translation career when she was still an undergraduate. She worked as
a part-time translator for a Vietnamese law firm since 2007 to 2009 and was then promoted to a
higher position, Senior Translator, at the same firm in 2010 and continued holding this position till
December 2010. Her current working place is a prestigious international U.S law firm with offices
located worldwide and also considered one of the largest foreign law firms operating in Vietnam for
over 20 years with more than 100 employees. Joining her U.S law firm since 2011, she is currently
a legal translator-cum-paralegal whose main duties entail translating legal documents of various
kinds; being an interpreter on request; reviewing translated documents provided by clients; meeting
with clients upon emergence of any controversies over a particular translated document; drafting a
number of legal instruments such as power of attorney, service agreements, loan agreements, and
so on, on a case-by-case basis; summarising legal documents newly issued by the Vietnamese
Government or by any governmental authorities; and working with practice groups in the firm in
collecting comments on newly issued laws/decrees/circulars. It is such wide range of tasks that has
helped sharpen her translation and other necessary skills over time, thanks to which she has been
more and more highly rated by her present colleagues and the firm’s partners. Apart from her full-
time job, she has been a freelance translator for certain entities since 2008 up to this time and has
been involved in different projects of both small and large scale. Apparently, she has devoted
herself to her translation career and she has earned a lot of knowledge and skills in return.
Nonetheless, she honestly shared with me in our interview that she will work much less when she
plans to get married and have kids. In terms of strengths and weaknesses, T2 asserted that her
biggest strength lies in her 7-year experience in Legal Translation together with her background
knowledge of legal industry gained from the course at HCMULAW whereas her most significant
weakness lies in her physical health so she cannot handle a large amount of work at once.

47
No matter how experienced and professional she is as a legal translator, T2 still ran into difficulties
inherent in this type of work during the course of her employment at her current firm. In particular,
she has had to work to tight deadlines very frequently at the firm’s request or struggled to translate
a document with specialized terminologies or ambiguously worded paragraphs caused by the
drafter’s repeated use of the same words/terms with different meanings. Once asked to give
illustrations of the problems as above mentioned, T2 recalled a story as detailed below:

A month ago I was assigned to translate a 27-page Guarantee from English into Vietnamese.
This document was prepared in relation to a term loan facility granted by a Bank to a Joint
Stock Company and as I rarely address such kind of document, it took me a few days to finish
the translation thereof since I had to do an extensive search on the Internet for sections that were
hard to understand thoroughly. This document is really a fair reflection of the so-called
‘ambiguously worded paragraph’ frequently used in legal instruments. Given paragraphs with
ambiguous wording, there is one in a Section titled ‘Guarantee and Indemnity’ where the
pronoun ‘it’ is used repeatedly but referring to different subjects:

“The Guarantor irrevocably and unconditionally agrees with the Agent and each Lender
that if any obligation guaranteed by it is or becomes unenforceable, invalid or illegal, it
will, as an independent and primary obligation indemnify the Agent and/or each Lenders
immediately and on demand against any cost, loss or liability it incurs as a result of the
Borrower not paying any amount which would, but for such unenforceability, invalidity
or illegality, have been payable by it under any Finance Document on the date and by the
time when it would have been due. The amount payable by the Guarantor under this
indemnity will not exceed the amount it would have had to pay under this Clause if the
amount claimed had been recoverable on the basis of a guarantee.”
(Quoted from a “Guarantee”)

When I read the paragraph for the first time, I could not get its precise meaning right away so I
read it again and again with intense concentration on the pronoun ‘it,’ which is applied six
times, to identify the right subject to which the pronoun refers whenever it appears since I
knew whether this paragraph will be accurately translated depends mainly on how to interpret
such pronoun. Eventually, I succeeded in matching each ‘it’ with its appropriate subject after
30 minutes reading extensively and carefully studying the paragraph and I was quite sure
about my interpretation. In fact, this pronoun refers to four totally different subjects.
Concretely, the first two ‘it’ refer to the Guarantor; the third ‘it’ refers to the Agent and/or

48
 each Lender; the fourth ‘it’ refers to the Borrower; the fifth ‘it’ refers to the unpaid amount of
money; and the sixth ‘it’ refers back to the Guarantor.

Translator 2, Transcript, September, 2014

It is true that T2 is a skilled and experienced legal translator but still encountering new challenges
every working day. The better she deals with them, the more competent and professional she
becomes and to be a chief legal translator as well as an attorney at law is an ultimate goal she is
attempting to achieve in four or five years’ time from now.

4.3 The Story of Translator 3

4.3.1 Educational Background

As briefly introduced in Chapter Three, Translator 3 (T3) was an English major at Ho Chi Minh
City University of Social Sciences and Humanities (HCMUSSH) from 1995 to 1999. This
institution, known as one of the two biggest institutions in the field of social sciences and
humanities in Vietnam, is a pioneer in offering new academic programs to meet societal demands
and English Linguistics and Literature is one of its primary training programs. Also in this period,
1995 - 2000, he was a student majoring in International Business at the Foreign Trade University
(the FTU), another local leading institution of higher education providing multidisciplinary courses
in economics, business and foreign languages. He decided to earn his third degree in Law at Ho Chi
Minh City University of Law (HCMULAW) in 2004 to become a professional lawyer. He
graduated from HCMULAW in 2008 with a certificate of merit, and possessing three Bachelor
Degrees in his twenties was undoubtedly his notable educational achievement.

4.3.2 A Professional Legal Translator

T3 commenced his translation career in 1998 as a part-time employee at an import-export company

with one of his main duties being translating documents and contracts. He had worked there for two
years before working for a Vietnamese export and import bank as a full-time translator and
interpreter in 2000 when he first acquainted himself with banking translation. He continued looking
for other job opportunities to acquire knowledge of other areas in subsequent years from 2000 to
2007 at big foreign companies where he learned new knowledge of logistics services and marine
and fire insurance, and, more to the point, translation was never excluded from his main tasks. He
chose Legal Translation as his professional career since 2007 to date, and, with a wide knowledge
of various fields, he is such an excellent legal translator that has given a highly creditable

49
performance at his current firm. He is now working as an attorney at law and also the chief
translator at an international French law firm where his main duties are translating legal documents
from English into Vietnamese and vice versa as well as doing legal search and helping Vietnamese
and foreign lawyers in preparing legal instruments and answers to clients’ questions relating to legal
issues. Given his biggest strength, he believes his vast knowledge of and practical working
experience in a variety of fields makes him a skilled and highly competitive legal translator as he is
today; however, he also admitted that he cannot work effectively after normal working hours and it
is hard to force him to work overtime as well. Though he deems this his biggest weakness, he
refuses to change his working principle and he is feeling satisfied with his current workload with no
overtime working required.

During his employment at such French law firm since 2009, T3 has dealt with different kinds of
legal documents relevant to a number of such practice areas as corporate, banking and finance,
labour, real estate, manufacturing and services and even though he is a translator of distinction, he
used to experience certain difficulties and problems that almost all legal translators could face, e.g.
lack of background knowledge of a particular field and terminologies. The following story told by
him in our interview is an illustrative example of the said problems:

I was asked to translate a 120-page technical document in the mining sector. I had a look at it
and said that it was difficult to translate as this was a paper about the mining process which
contained a lot of technical terms. I discussed with a lawyer in charge of the file that we could
request the client to ask their engineers to do it and we would correct the English version or to
engage a translation company to do it. Unfortunately, the client did not have good English-
speaking engineers and want to keep confidential of the document. Therefore, I had to be in
charge of the translation with support by other junior lawyers and I was responsible to combine
and review translated parts of other junior lawyers. This document was a real challenge to me. I
had to do a lot of research on the Internet and discussed with the client. There were some parts
in the document I did not understand so I translated them word by word and sent them to the
client for checking. Finally I finished the document. The client was an Asian company so their
English was not so good. I did not know whether my translated document was satisfactory or
not. I assumed that no adverse response on the translated document meant everything was good.
I have a good experience in this case that if I try my best to do something deemed impossible, I
will achieve a result which may not be satisfactory. However, I like the phrase “better than
nothing.”
Translator 3, Transcript, September, 2014

50
The presented example partially reveals real challenges facing legal translators at all times.
Working as legal translators, it is inevitable for us to translate a document of a completely strange
area that we have never experienced before. As shown through the example, T3 had to handle a
document in mining sector while he is only familiar with other practice areas as listed above, which
means he hardly had any knowledge about the document he was coping with at the time and what
he could do was trying his best to complete such a tough task, whereas the quality of the translated
document was not guaranteed. It was obvious that lacking background knowledge of mining
industry and of mining terminologies in both English and Vietnamese really caused T3 intractable
problems when his wide range of knowledge became useless. The point is he cannot get rid of those
repetitive problems as long as he works in the field, and the only solution is to keep learning new
knowledge and improving himself as what he has been doing since the date he chose to became a
professional legal translator.

4.4 The Story of Translator 10

4.4.1 Educational Background

Translator 10 (T10) was admitted to the Faculty of Foreign Languages at Ton Duc Thang
University (TDTU) in 2001, majoring in English Language Pedagogy as he wished to be an English
teacher upon graduation at the time. Known as one of the fastest developing higher education
institutions in Vietnam, TDTU has offered both local training and international collaborative
programs with its students being ranked among the best students in HCMC and in Vietnam.
Learning to be a teacher, T10 was taught teaching methodologies for much of his 4-year course,
but, in the meantime, translation was also included in the entire training program as a compulsory
subject to equip students of English major with basic translation skills and knowledge. He
graduated from TDTU in 2005 and went into teaching right after that to practice what he learned
from TDTU with no intention of being a translator, let alone a legal translator as he is today.

4.4.2 A Professional Legal Translator

T10 had been in English teaching for three years before pursuing a professional career in Legal
Translation since 2007, which turned out to be a successful career advancement that he had built.
He joined his first and also his current law firm since 2007 up to now and his excellent performance
thereat has earned him recognition as a translator of distinction. As regards T10’s present working
place, it has won renown as one of the largest and most successful law firms founded in Vietnam
and has been ranked among the 1st tier law firms by Legal 500, Chambers and IFLR1000 in most of

51
major practice areas for many consecutive years. From an English teacher with no translation
experience in his early stages, he is now a skilled and experienced legal translator with seven years
working in legal industry and concurrently a treasure of his firm who has significantly contributed
to the firm’s long-term success. Concerning his plus and minus points, he was definite that his high
translation speed, 20 – 30 pages per day, has helped distinguished himself from other legal
translators and made him more competitive. Still, what has made him less confident is the lack of
background knowledge of other areas that he may involve sometimes such as insurance, energy,
tax, and so on.

With respect to difficulties and problems T10 has experienced in doing his job so far, strict
deadlines/deadline overlap and limited knowledge of other business sectors have given him a lot of
trouble sometimes. To illustrate his point, he told me a story about tight and overlapped deadlines
and how such problem was solved in the end:

As my firm is led by a group of Partners with each in charge of a particular practice area, I have
to work for all of them whenever the need arises, in which case deadline overlap will become
unavoidable. That really happened one day a year ago when two Partners assigned me two
different translation tasks and asked me to revert to them on the same day few days later. Both
the documents are long and difficult to deal with but I was given 2 days only to finish them all.
This task could be regarded as mission impossible and there was no possibility that I could
complete the task within the specified period so I talked to the two Partners about my difficult
situation and waited for their further instructions before proceeding with the task. The Partners
then talked to each other regarding the priority of the document and one of them told me what to
do after they mutually agreed on which task should be done first and which could be done later.
I worked more effectively then with the help of the Partners in addressing the problem and one
of the best things at my firm is that all problems will be amicably settled by the Partners.

Translator 3, Transcript, September, 2014

Every legal translator has their own problems and difficulties and T10 is no exception as evidenced
above. It is the way he copes with them that counts and he has really ameliorated tense situations in
his own way. This can be seen through his outstanding performance at the current firm and it is
undoubtedly that his strong attachment to the firm will keep him there in the long run.

4.5 Conclusion

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Definitely, my own stories and those of the other three legal translators as above unfolded do not
paint the complete picture of ‘Legal Translation’, but rather giving a brief glimpse of the field
through which the audience can imagine how legal translators like us do our job with clearly visible
problems and challenges. In other words, these stories are shared for illustrative purposes only and
also serve as the basis for my thematic analysis of data in the next Chapter where central issues
emerging from the data provided by all the participants will be considered in a thorough manner and
findings relating thereto will be discussed accordingly.

CHAPTER FIVE

A THEMATIC ANALYSIS OF DATA AND DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS

This Chapter Five is where I will consider in detail the themes that have arisen from the data
gathered from ten [10] interviews. Concretely, similarities and discrepancies emerging from the
participants’ responses and also what I myself have experienced in my capacity as legal translator
will be highlighted. At the same time, the findings will be summarized and backed up with
examples from the data and the literature.

5.1 Skills and Qualities that are deemed essential for legal translators at all levels

53
Every occupation requires typical skills and qualities from the ones who follow it and it is true to
Legal Translation as well. When asked to name some important skills and qualities regarded
necessary for their daily work, the participants gave diverse replies which still have something in
common.

Five out of ten interviewed translators (T2, T6, T7, T8, and T10) 1 agreed that reading
comprehension is the most important skill for Legal Translation, without which they find it
extremely hard to understand lengthy sentences with odd or difficult structures, let alone translating
them. Furthermore, the fact remains that legal instruments are of unreadable nature; it is, therefore,
easy for legal translators to get lost or be distracted while reading these instruments unless they are
patient and pay much attention to details to pick out the core meaning of the text. To put it another
way, a legal document, whether short or long, could not be understood thoroughly if it is read for
only one time without carefully studying every single word and detail, failing which the translator
cannot precisely translate what the text aims to express. Following is an example taken from a Loan
Agreement:

Restricted Party means a person that is: (i) listed on, or owned or controlled by a person listed
on, or acting on behalf of a person listed on, any Sanctions List; (ii) located in, incorporated
under the laws of, or owned or (directly or indirectly) controlled by, or acting on behalf of, a
person located in or organised under the laws of a country or territory that is the target of
country-wide or territory-wide Sanctions; or (iii) otherwise a target of Sanctions (target of
Sanctions signifying a person with whom a US person or other national of a Sanctions
Authority would be prohibited or restricted by law from engaging in trade, business or other
activities).
(Quoted from a Loan Agreement)
(Translator 2, Transcript, September 2014)

This illustrated sentence is truly a very long one (115 words in total) with a high level of
embedding. The point is this is completely normal to legal instruments where lengthy sentences are
frequently used and the longer a sentence is, the higher the embedding level is, rendering it difficult
to be interpreted satisfactorily if close reading is not properly done (refer back to Chapter Two for
further details on Characteristics of Legal Translation). The above sentence is merely one of
several sentences of similar nature used in a contract/agreement that a legal translator often faces in
translating this kind of document. Obviously, if the translator is not an attentive reader with good

1
T2, T6, T7…: Translator 2, Translator 6, Translator 7…

54
reading skills, it is likely that he/she cannot understand the sentence correctly. In a word, the better
legal translators master such kinds of skills, the more effectively they handle their job.

Writing skills are ranked second with consent from four [04] translators (T1, T2, T6, and T10),
reasoning that Vietnamese-English translation cannot be done successfully unless the translator is
good at writing skills as this may result in poor quality English versions. In this regard,
grammatical competence is deemed an integral part to such kinds of skills (T5, T6, T7, T8 and T10)
as without good grammar, a legal translator is unable to fulfil his/her task in both English-
Vietnamese and Vietnamese-English translation; specifically, the translator will find it hard to
understand English sentences with difficult structures unless he/she knows how to analyse such
sentences grammatically and also Vietnamese sentences may not be accurately translated into
English if the translator fails to employ correct grammar. For instance, the sentence in Vietnamese
below was translated differently by two legal translators, a junior and a senior:

“Các nghĩa vụ của Bên Có Nghĩa Vụ theo quy định của Bảo Lãnh xếp hạng và sẽ tối thiểu xếp
hạng ngang bằng với tất cả các nghĩa vụ không được bảo đảm và không thứ cấp khác của Bên
Có Nghĩa Vụ, ngoại trừ những nghĩa vụ được ưu tiên theo quy định pháp luật.”
The Junior’s version:
The obligations of the obligor under the provisions of Surety rank and will rank at least equally
with all obligations is not guaranteed and no other secondary obligor, except those obligations
prioritized according to law.
The Senior’s version:
The obligations of the Obligor under the Guarantee rank and will rank at least pari passu with
all its other unsecured and unsubordinated obligations except for obligations preferred as a
matter of law.
(Extracted from Form of Internal Legal Opinion)
(Translator 6, Transcript, September 2014)

It is clearly that the Junior’s version is not as good as the Senior’s one because of three factors:
word choice and grammar. As the junior translator did not know certain legal terminologies, his
sentence did not look standard as it is supposed to be whereas the senior translator used appropriate
legal jargons in this case so his sentence sounded more legal as a result (e.g. equally # pari passu;
not guaranteed and no other secondary obligor # unsecured and unsubordinated obligations;
according to law # as a matter of law). Besides, the first version was not correctly translated in
terms of grammar (The obligations of the obligor under the provisions of Surety rank and will rank
at least equally with all obligations is not guaranteed and no other secondary obligor), which is

55
believed to be caused by the junior’s limited grammar knowledge, resulting in his poor writing
skills.

The participants additionally mentioned analytical skills (T3, T5, and T4) as skills to be owned for
such skills facilitate them in understanding and translating legal instruments more precisely. Having
an experience in this regard, I would like to share my story:

A month ago I was asked to translate from English into Vietnamese a document relating to life
insurance and its products with brand new knowledge of marketing and insurance sectors. I had
to spend a lot of time searching for marketing and insurance terminologies and concepts on the
Internet but the point is how to choose appropriate explanations/definitions thereof in an ocean
of information. That was when I made the best use of my analytical skills to collect and analyse
information I got from the Internet and make decisions on which explanations/definitions
perfectly match such undefined terms/expressions, having considered the marketing and life
insurance context.
Researcher’s story, November, 2014

By conducting extensive research and leveraging my analytical skills, I finished the document to
the satisfaction of the lawyer in charge and concurrently obtained certain knowledge of marketing
and life insurance sectors in return.

In addition to the skills as above described, there are certain qualities that assist the participants to
work more efficiently and confidently. From the list of qualities provided by all the translators,
knowledge of local and international legal systems (T1, T6, T7, and T9), general knowledge (T3,
T5, and T8) and patience (T4, T5, and T8) outweigh other qualities as agreed by the majority of the
participants. It is easily comprehensible why such qualities take the lead. As the Literature Review
Chapter reveals, lawyers expect legal translators to produce their translated versions with legal
effect guaranteed, hence a need for a legal translator to possess knowledge of both local and
international legal systems to this end. Without such knowledge, the translator can purely ensure
grammatically correct translation but not a translation with a legal sense. General knowledge, on the
other hand, is considered essential to a legal translator as Legal Translation deals with various
domains of knowledge, i.e. finance, medicine, politics, etc. It is true that a legal translator will
process a legal document quicker if he/she is knowledgeable about as many areas as possible since
he/she possibly needs not to spend much time searching for information of a particular knowledge
domain. The reason ‘patience’ is required of a legal translator is understandable also. Regarded as
one of the most difficult instruments to read, legal instruments easily cause its translators impatient

56
and distracted in translating them, especially when the document is about a completely strange area
where extensive research is compulsory. Patience, in this case, helps the translator focus on the
work and stick to it until it is finished although he/she does not enjoy doing it at all. Apart from the
said qualities, the participants also list some other qualities that they think indispensable for a legal
translator and also what they are possessing, including neutrality (T1 & T2) to be impartial in
translating any kinds of documents, carefulness (T3 & T10) to produce error-free translated
versions, enquiring mind (T3 & T4) to proactively acquire as much knowledge of different fields as
possible, passion for source language and target language (T5) to stay long in the position, and
good memory (T9) to quickly refer to documents or resources relevant to the document being
handled.

Briefly, despite the fact that all the interviewed translators are at different levels, subject to their
experience (ranging from 2 to 14 years) in Legal Translation, they all own special skills and
qualities that are vital to the post as specified above. Take a look back at Chapter Two where
related literature is reviewed, the above said skills and qualities were partially reflected with
illustrations while Characteristics of Legal Translation and Requirements to be satisfied by Legal
Translators were being examined. In the participants’ view, if a fish cannot survive without water,
legal translators cannot survive Legal Translation without possessing the afore-mentioned skills and
qualities and mastering these skills and qualities fully turns to be a decisive factor that helps
confirm pre-eminent position of a legal translator amongst his/her counterparts.

5.2 Tertiary-level Translation Training Programs received by the participants

Before becoming professional legal translators as they are today, all the translators interviewed had
to undergo academic English training programs at their universities and how they were trained to be
legal translators is no doubt another critical issue to be looked at in more detail.

Question 03 to Question 07 in the list of 22 Interview Questions were designed to reflect the
training history of 10 legal translators involved in this study, and the participants’ responses to such
questions did not surprise me at all.

Sadly, none of the participants were taught to become legal translators when they were
undergraduates of English major (Q3) 2. I could guess their answers in advance indeed as I was also
one of them who received translation training of similar nature back then. In particular, nine [09]

2
Q3: Question 3

57
translators (T1, T2, T3, T4, T5, T6, T7, T8, and T9) were merely taught general English, including
English four skills and other English-major related subjects, together with non-specialized English
translation and interpretation when they chose English Translation and Interpretation to go with.
T10 was an exception who learned teaching methodology for the most part of his university
training; still, English translation was included at a basic level with no specialized translation area.
In a word, all 10 translators graduated from their universities holding a BA in English which earned
them knowledge of English language, comprising English Translation and Interpretation and
English teaching methodology, as the case may be, but the ugly truth is none of them were equipped
with Legal Translation or any other specialized translation fields by the universities upon
graduation when it was time for them to earn their living as translators.

Though the participants studied at different institutions, they all went through a similar learning
process if they majored in English Translation and Interpretation, ranging from basic translation to
advanced translation in both English and Vietnamese languages with training materials appropriate
to each learning phase. Translation training materials utilized in the participants’ time might help
to corroborate the point.

At first, they were taught basic translation with a textbook titled ‘Luyện Dịch Căn Bản’ (Basic
Translation Practice) or the like specially designed for that purpose entailing basic grammar rules,
basic sentence structures and sentence translation practice. Once they passed such sentence level,
they would move to paragraph translation covering diverse topics, e.g. environment, business,
tourism, social issues, to name a few, attached with sets of new vocabulary for each particular topic
with the help of such textbooks as ‘Luyện dịch 1 – Anh - Việt’ (Translation Practice 1 (E-V)) and
‘Luyện dịch 2 – Việt - Anh’ (Translation Practice 2 (V-E)). For advanced level when they reach
their final years of university, the participants were taught ‘Phiên dịch 1 & 2’ (Interpreting 1 & 2)
for interpretation skill practice, along with ‘Luyện dịch Cao cấp – Anh - Việt’ ( Advanced
Translation (E-V)) and ‘Luyện dịch Cao cấp – Việt - Anh’ (Advanced Translation (V-E)) with essay
or article translation mainly in the field of tourism and business and new vocabulary was also
provided therein. To sum up, although the participants did have chances to practice their translation
and interpretation skills in a number of fields, they could not acquire a considerable amount of
knowledge of any particular field, given limited training time at school as well as limited amount of
knowledge of a particular field they earned during years of university.

Apparently, the translation training programs reflected through such training materials as above
presented provide a logical explanation as to why all the interviewed translators said “No” when

58
asked the following question: “Do you think your training was adequate to meet your current needs
as a legal translator?” (Q5). Simply, none of each of the participant received academic training in
Legal Translation when they were would-be translators at their institutions. Nine [09] participants
(T1, T2, T3, T4, T5, T6, T7, T8, and T10) underwent general translation training with their
translation tasks mainly involving tourism and business whereas T9 was trained to translate political
issues for the most part as it was when Vietnam was fighting against American army. Q6 and Q7
were made as a follow-up to Q5 for the purpose of examining specific aspects of the training
programs that the participants would change if they could, and eight [08] out of ten [10] translators
(T2, T3, T4, T5, T6, T7, T8, and T9) raised their voice in this regard. In particular, four [04] (T2,
T3, T5, and T7) concurred that Legal Translation should be included in their university training by
way of providing students with legal documents from simple to advanced level so that they could
familiarize themselves with legal terminologies, legal systems, complicated sentence/phrase/clause
structures frequently used in legal documents, and so on, given an increase in market demands on
Legal Translation upon Vietnam’s entry into WTO since 2007. Concerning other training aspects
added by the participants, T5 and T9 wanted to have literature translation; T6 looked for more
training in translation software and information technology that he deems useful for him to work
faster when manual translation is minimized; T7 wished to be provided with basic knowledge of law
as he worked for a law firm when he was still a student; T8 thought all students should be equipped
with self-study skills as “humans are born to learn but need to know how to learn well”. Aside from
the additional training aspects as above listed, I also asked for such subjects as may be deemed
redundant by the participants and found that Vietnam’s politics-related subjects are suggested to be
left out of the translation courses as they are of no help for translators’ future career (T5 & T7).
What is surprising about the findings in this respect is that T1 and T10 had no complaint about their
past training programs as, in their opinions, the programs sufficiently provided them with the
knowledge they need, for example English skills and English-related knowledge.

As the above fact reveals, Legal Translation was not part of the past translation training programs
received by all the participants, which means the participants merely learned to be translators in
general, not to be translators of any particular area, legal translators in this case, when they were
undergraduates of English Translation and Interpretation major. For this reason, all the participants
and I joined our very first law firms with very little or almost no knowledge of Legal Translation
and we had to study extensively on our own, or more precisely, we received on-the-job training
through our daily work. Indeed, we both worked and learned at the same time to acquire Legal
Translation knowledge, little by little, and all the earlier introduced skills and qualities that this job

59
requires were also developed and sharpened during this process of autonomous learning. At present,
we still keep learning new knowledge to catch up with today’s fast changing world in different
ways, particulars of which will be presented in the next Section.

5.3 Training received or considered useful by the participants in Legal Translation

Since their past translation training failed to meet their current needs as legal translators, all the
translators engaged in this research have constantly made enormous efforts to survive Legal
Translation and become more and more professional as they are today in various methods. What in
particular all the participants have done to reach this level is self-studying extremely hard by
reading extensively both Vietnamese and international laws to accumulate legal knowledge as well
as by studying thoroughly documents in a variety of fields such as banking, finance, tax, insurance,
etc., to learn new terminologies/concepts and familiarize themselves with different contexts when
they are free from work. Some participants also searched for other training programs to obtain extra
knowledge and they did attend such program once it was found. Specifically, four [04] translators
(T1, T2, T3, and T7) already took a course in Law at HCMULAW as their second degree to equip
themselves with practical legal knowledge of Vietnam as well as knowledge of other legal systems
that they believe vital to their work and three of them (T2, T3, and T7) also finished Legal Practice
Course offered by HCMC Judicial Academy to become qualified lawyers. Unanimously, these four
translators asserted that the knowledge they gained from the course, e.g. labor law, law on
enterprises, law on land, banking law, etc., did materially assist them in doing their work more
efficiently in terms of time and efforts and make them more confident, compared to the time when
they possessed no knowledge of Law. Once asked about type of training that they think most useful
for them at this stage of work (Q8), each participant gave their own opinions which are briefly
summarized in Table 5.1 hereunder.

Translator Training Area Reason Status

More and more companies being sold to or
Translator 1 Law: Merger and Acquisition Not yet received
merged with other companies
To earn legal knowledge to better support her
Translator 2 Law Done
job
To effectively deal with documents in these
Banking & Finance
Translator 3 sectors as he usually faces such areas in his Not yet received
Terminologies
daily work
To support her work at Immigration
Translator 4 Law: Immigration Law Not yet received
Department
Translator 5 Application of Translation
Tools/Software
To speed up translation process Not yet received
Translator 6 (TRADOS, Wordfast,
Babylon, Prompt, Systran…)

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 His job requires interpretation sometimes and
Translator 7 Interpretation Not yet received
he wants to improve his memorization skills
To translate exactly terms and conditions of
Translator 8 Law: Labor Law Not yet received
labor contracts
Her job requires French translation as it is a
Translator 9 French Legal Translation Not yet received
French law firm
Translator 10 Law To translate the text in its true legal sense in Not yet received
compliance with the legal system of the target
language

Table 5.1: Summary of participants’ opinions on training programs they consider useful at this stage of work

As shown through Table 5.1, the participants opined differently upon training courses they might
take to work better in legal industry but most of them have yet had an opportunity to join these
programs due to their heavy schedules and also because some training areas (Banking & Financial
Terminologies; Application of Translation Tools/Software; French Legal Translation) are not being
offered widely in HCMC outside law firms.

The Table also demonstrates that Law is a training area desired by many participants, whether or
not they already took a Law course (T1, T2, T4, T8, and T10) as knowledge of law is of crucial
important to a legal translator. In fact, what makes legal translators work less effectively and feel
less confident is their lack of background knowledge of law and legal systems while their daily
work involves reading, examining, translating and reviewing legal instruments of various kinds. In
other words, a legal translator could not translate any legal instrument in its strict legal sense
without legal knowledge unless he/she is a real lawyer, hence the need for final review by another
lawyer at the firm before the document is sent out. I am a case in point who owns almost no
knowledge of law so all of my work must be finally reviewed by a lawyer to ensure legal effect
thereof before it comes to clients’ hands. Moreover, I usually ask and seek advice from lawyers on
any part of a document that I am not sure how to translate with its legal sense assured. This truly
makes me more passive in doing my job and I have to rely much on lawyers and so do other
participants who have yet studied Law. In contrast, those who already earned themselves legal
knowledge from law school, T1, T2, T3 and T7 in this case, feel much more active and confident in
work once they can preserve legal effect of the text they are handling and in some cases they even
do not need another lawyer to review their work as it is good enough to deliver to clients.
Apparently, there is a big gap between legal translators with legal knowledge and those without
such kind of knowledge. It is undeniable that the former will be more highly rated in their firms
whereas the latter still has a way to go to reach that level.

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For other training areas as above mentioned, the participants have applied a number of ways to
acquire that knowledge in the absence of official training. In particular, what T3 is doing day by day
to get the knowledge he wants, banking and finance terminologies, is to read extensively documents
in these sectors and practice translating such kinds of materials on a regular basis to have these
terms embedded in his mind automatically. Updating these terms in his self-made glossary is the
next step to take so he could quickly refer to it when necessary without spending time searching on
the Internet again. As regards translation software (TRADOS, Wordfast, Babylon, Prompt, Systran,
etc.) that remarkably assists translation process with little involvement of translators, T5 and T6
study by themselves how to use the software to speed up their translation as their firms do not apply
such tools due to cost issue. Normally, it is costly to furnish such software and more to the point,
the translator might be deemed redundant at his/her company once the software is used. In reality,
only companies providing professional translation services, Sao Phuong Nam Translation Co. Ltd,
Viet My Translation Consultancy Co. Ltd; Vietnamese-Australian Consulting and Translation Co.,
Ltd, to name a few, prefer using translation software to conduct translation tasks assigned by clients
whereas the majority of law firms opt to have their own legal translators, whether part-time or full-
time, to perform translation tasks to ensure translation quality which the software may fail to meet.
In respect of Interpretation course, T7 learnt that there is a short-term course (six months) of this
kind provided in Hanoi and he plans to take it as soon as possible. In brief, constant learning in
areas connected with Legal Translation is no doubt essential to all the participants as long as they
stay in this position and subject to their working schedule, financial condition and their own needs,
they will find their own ways to gain such knowledge (as evidenced above) in an effort to protect
their position at the current firm as well as to pave the way for their career advancement.

5.4 Legal Translation Training offered by the participants’ law firms

It was sad to know that most of the participants’ law firms (T1, T3, T4, T5, T6, T7, T8, T9, and
T10) and my firm also provide no internal Legal Translation Training, letting alone opportunities
for external training in such translation area (Q9). T2 is possibly the luckiest one of the group when
her firm agreed to sponsor her Law studying at HCMULAW. That is to say the interviewed
translators have to pursue training courses as are necessary for their work at their own expense if
they want to improve their translation skills and broaden their background knowledge. T1, T3 and
T7 are a case in point when they decided to did Law as their second degree without any sponsor
from their firms. Given such reality, legal translators still, in most cases, have to pay by themselves
should they wish to sharpen their translation skills or to earn more knowledge relevant to Legal

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Translation in the foreseeable future, despite the fact that their law firms are one of the main
beneficiaries. This was evidenced earlier in the preceding Section 5.3 where specific methods that
T3, T5, T6, and T7 have employed to receive their targeted training are considered.

The above presentation of the participants’ past and present translation training makes it
transparently obvious that, whether in the past or at the present time, Legal Translation Training
could not be received in institutions of higher education or anywhere else in HCMC unless the
translator works for a law firm. As William Weaver (translator of The Name of the Rose)
concludes, ‘Translation, unfortunately, is something you learn only by doing’ (as quoted in
Slepchenko 2011), on-the-job training is the only kind of training that a legal translator could
undergo from the very outset and extra training in the field can be received later, subject to his/her
actual needs. For this reason, all the participants were brand new ‘soldiers’ in legal battle when they
first joined their law companies and besides making their best endeavors to adapt themselves to
such a totally new working environment, they have never stopped learning to be more and more
competent and skilled in doing their job. The majority of 10 translators (T1, T2, T7, T8, T9, and
T10) admitted that it took them around two to three years to become a competent legal translator
once they felt less difficult in dealing with their daily work (Q10).

5.5 Problems and Difficulties encountered by the participants and Solutions proposed

As an insider of the legal industry in HCMC who has lived Legal Translation for more than three
years, I have experienced certain problems and difficulties that put me under considerable pressures
sometimes. Accordingly, I shaped Q13 in the belief that other legal translators have their own
challenges as well and I am curious about their problems and how these problems were eventually
tackled.

Frankly, it did not astonish me when six [06] participants (T1, T2, T4, T5, T7, and T8) conceded
that terminologies have constantly caused them headaches. From my personal perspective with
relevant experience, there are two main causes rendering terminologies a nightmare for the majority
of legal translators. The first reason could be attributable to a lack of legal knowledge and as well
knowledge of a particular field, for example banking, finance, insurance, construction, and so on.
Explanations of specialized terminologies are not provided in normal dictionaries most of the time
is the second reason that triggers troubles as any translation cannot be completed unless the
translator knows appropriate meaning of every single word/expression used in a sentence. The
example that follows will help clarify the point:

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 Underwriting: The Insurer will have sophisticated capabilities for auto-underwriting
(automatically underwritten when a certain set of parameters is met), pre-underwriting
(enabling at point-of-sale to commit issuance of the policy), and interactive questioning for
simpler sales process. Tailored grids (financial and medical, focused on channels / products)
are developed within the risk framework of the Insurer to enable the distributors to be highly
competitive, while remaining compliant.
(Quoted from a Long Term Life Insurance Agreement)

Genuinely, this instance generated from my work a month ago. At that time I was requested to
translate a Life Insurance Agreement of 35 pages long and the document really scared me when I
skimmed through it for the first time and found that it is all about life insurance, insurance
products, and marketing strategies to promote sales of such products. As confirmed by the
translators I met and from my own experience, Insurance documents are considered one of the most
difficult documents to deal with due to its specialized terminologies which could not be found
easily through dictionaries or Internet. The illustrative paragraph is one of six components of the
Customer Services Architecture that the Insurer plans to apply and the point is I could not
understand it at all for a large amount of insurance terminologies are used, i.e. underwriting; auto-
underwriting; pre-underwriting; interactive questioning and financial and medical grids. The same
happened with the rest components and I had no other choice but seeking advice from an insider of
insurance industry who is knowledgeable about life insurance and it was so lucky that I could find
one. Upon hearing his detailed explanations, I then knew what the paragraph is about and translated
it smoothly.

There is no denying that terminologies have continuously frightened the legal translators
interviewed give a quote from your data and I myself as above reasoned, regardless of our years of
Legal Translation experience and more to the point, terminology will always be a big challenge as
long as we hold this post.

In addition to the afore-said problem which is deemed most prominent, the participants also brought
other noticeable problems and difficulties to light, entailing lack of background knowledge of other
areas (as evidenced in T4’s story, Chapter Four); ambiguities (T2) (as evidenced in T2’s story,
Chapter Four); strict deadlines/overlapped deadlines (as evidenced in T10’s story, Chapter Four);
and lack of equivalents in the target language (T3) (refer back to Section 2.3, Chapter Two).

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In making these difficulties less severe, the participants and I have worked out certain solutions
from time to time, and the most workable solutions to such problems are extensively searching on
the Internet until satisfactory explanations/definitions are found or asking lawyers/experts of
relevant practice areas inside and outside the firms for help.

Notwithstanding the foregoing problems and difficulties, all the participants are working quite well
at their current firms and only two [02] (T2 and T6) have come across a case that was appealed
because of a translator issue (Q15) as detailed below:

(T2): There was a project involving more than one law firm and we had to work with
translators from the other law firm on the same document translated by the two groups of
translators to ensure terminology consistency. Sometimes, we could not reach agreement on
the translation of certain terminologies and the two groups argued to prove its translation was
correct. At another time, I received complaints from a Client for the translation of a
Distribution Agreement, I then reviewed the document and discussed with the Client to make
adjustments accordingly.
Translator 2, Transcript, September 2014

(T6): It was not my case but my team member’s: when receiving the document, the client
listed out certain points that they believed not correctly translated then complained about that.
As a senior translator, I checked each point again and gave further explanations or corrected it
(as the case may be) then sent the document back to the client’s satisfaction.
Translator 6, Transcript, September 2014

Fortunately, none of ten [10] translators have encountered any ethical dilemmas as may be arisen
out of their daily work so far (Q16). In terms of translation policies that the participants must
follow at their present working places (Q17), confidentiality and guarantee of best quality and of
true and correct translation are the most common policies that such law firms impose on their
translation staff.

5.6 Attitudes of the participants towards Legal Translation you might have to cut this section
due to lack of space and just concentrate on the job itself

One of the most interesting findings is that not all the participants enjoy being legal translators
although they have been working devotedly in this field (Q18). To give particular examples, T3, T6,
and T10 are those who are not doing this job as they want to but as they have to or should do for
certain reasons. As T3 honestly shared, since he is desirous to become a teacher in business and

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legal English in four or five years from now, he chose Legal Translation to equip himself with
necessary knowledge and skills and his present position as a legal translator serves as a buffer for
him in achieving his future goal. Holding that legal translator is not a well-paid job, T6 is not
satisfied with his current salary and usually looks for other job opportunities that can offer him good
rates of pay. This is true to some extent, especially in cases of Vietnamese law firms and I
experienced the same also. My old local law firm is a well-known firm with a profitable business;
its employees, however, are not paid in accordance with what they deserve so I fully comprehend
T6’s attitudes towards such wage matter. A bit different from T3 and T6, T10 is quite a contented
man who did not select Legal Translation as he loves it but because this job suits him best, given
his personalities, which concurrently helps explain why he does not want to change job or reach a
higher level in a few years’ time when asked about his long-term goal. Perhaps T5 is the most
special one in this regard who gave a unique answer that she neither likes nor dislikes being a legal
translator, but it is interesting to note that she aims to start her own translation business in the
foreseeable future.

Unlike the afore-mentioned translators, the remaining participants (T1, T2, T4, T7, T8, and T9)
have been feeling pleased with their current job for a variety of reasons. T1, T2 and T4 think the
same that this occupation provides them with a wide and practical knowledge of Vietnamese legal
system and that of other countries and also helps develop their translation skills over time. With an
interest in linguistics and law, T7 believes Legal Translation can greatly assist him in exploring
such areas more thoroughly. As for T8, it is the transparency and accuracy nature of Legal
Translation that keeps him stay in his present position in the long run as he is fond of doing a
transparently and accurately oriented job. T9 asserts that facing legal jargon in different languages
day after day is a good way to make her mind constantly work, in spite of the fact that she will be
retiring in two more years. In respect of career moves that these participants plan to make in four or
five years from now, T1, T2, T4 and T7 want to be Chief Translator; T8 wants to become a teacher
of translation/Legal Translation; and T9 will be a freelance translator on request upon retirement.

The last issue worth mentioning is that whether or not Legal Translation is an occupation that has
the potential for growth and nine [09] of ten [10] participants affirmed the growth potential of this
field with specific reasons attached (Q21). One of the principal reasons stated by the translators (T1,
T2, T3, T4, T5, and T6) is Vietnam’s joining WTO that paves the way for global trade, foreign
direct investment and international capital flows into Vietnam, as a result of which translation of
legal instruments issued under the legal systems of all nations concerned has become vital. In other

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words, the more business opportunities are generated on a global scale, the more badly Legal
Translation is needed to have accurately translated legal documents based on which transactions
would be carried out in a legal and valid manner. As T7 opined, an acute shortage of legal
translators in HCMC also boosts market demands for professional translators who could deal with
such challenging job, adding that this job offers good rates of pay in cases of foreign law firms as he
is experiencing. T8 and T10 admitted this occupation’s potential; however, they are not as
optimistic as the others with their own viewpoints. Specifically, T8 does not think Legal
Translation could remarkably grow in the foreseeable future as language is merely a means of
communication whereas T10 sees that a law firm does not need many translators, whether it is
operating in a big way. His firm is a good example when there are three [03] translators only in both
HCMC and Hanoi offices, compared to approximately a hundred [100] employees in total so he
hardly escapes from a heavy workload. From my own experience and observation, I entirely concur
with T10’s view in this regard. Taking my old firm as an example, I was the only translator who
had to handle a large volume of work for six consecutive months after the senior translator quit and
the firm found it unnecessary to hire a new one. After I left for my current firm, the firm then had
no translator for months though the need for translation still existed. That is to say law firms can
survive without legal translators and this position is even not needed by some small-scale law firms
where business is not going well and lawyers will handle translation tasks instead. It is sad but true
to this occupation in HCMC at present so it is completely comprehensible as to why T8 and T10
have such negative thoughts. Only T9 gave neither “Yes” nor “No” answer to this question but
giving a neutral statement that whether or not Legal Translation has growth potential depends on
how you see it.

5.7 Conclusion

This Chapter Five is shaped as a thematic analysis of the data collected from ten [10] interviews I
had conducted with findings reported and interpreted cautiously. Nonetheless, it should be noted
that the Chapter does not aim to cover all aspects relevant to Legal Translation but rather presenting
a number of fundamental and key issues arising from this kind of job as well as reflecting attitudes
of the translators towards this occupation. With the hope that this Chapter will bring the readers
closer to Legal Translation by deepening their understanding of the field and of those who live it
year by year, I made every effort to have each issue examined as honestly and thoroughly as
possible so that no reader finishes reading the Chapter empty-handed.

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