Contracts & agreements
From general terms to complex contractual documents. Terms, cross-references and defined expressions stay in context.
Understand the law. Get the language right.
Your legal documents.
Precisely translated.
Contracts, patents and pleadings: every phrase matters. We translate with legal expertise, attention to the relevant jurisdiction and consistent terminology, including through successive negotiation rounds.
For businesses, law firms and organisations.
Languages. Service. Quality. Technology.
- Turnaround
- Hours–days
depending on project volume and requirements
- Experience
- 30+ years
localization experience at zappmedia GmbH, since 1993
- Projects
- 90,000+
completed localization projects
- Client testimonials
- 1,047
published feedback from our clients
- Languages
- 80+
for translation, voice recording, subtitling and transcription
- Certification
- ISO 9001
TÜV-audited quality management at zappmedia GmbH, since 2006
Legal knowledge.
In your target language.
Specialist translation combines linguistic precision with an understanding of different legal systems.
Patents & intellectual property
Technical and legal expertise work together to produce precise descriptions and consistent terminology.
Pleadings & proceedings
Claims, judgments or negotiation documents: volume, deadlines and translation directions are planned together.
One term.
The right legal context.
We clarify requirements early so that sensitive, time-critical documents receive focused attention.
Specialist legal teams
The established service includes translators with a legal background and experience in their field of law.
Terminology & versions
Agreed terms and approved earlier versions support consistent revisions and both translation directions.
Confidential handling
Personal project management and defined access arrangements. Our quality page explains management systems and data transfer.
Tight deadlines
For extensive documents, we assess parallel teamwork. Your quote includes a dependable delivery date.
Documents & deliverables
From contracts
to patents.
Specialist fields and document types from our established range of services.
- Contract, patent and trademark law
- Insurance, tax and real estate law
- Family, employment and criminal law
- Legislation, pleadings and judgments
- Contracts, general terms and commercial register extracts
- Deeds, certificates and educational records
Clear responsibility.
Through the final version.
A personal contact coordinates language directions, review stages and document versions.
Clarify context & requirements
Provide the target country, intended use, language direction, deadline and any requirements set by the recipient.
Agree the team & terminology
Reference material, existing contracts and terminology requirements establish the basis for translation.
Review versions & deliver
Changes and back-translations follow the agreed workflow; the approved version is delivered.
Precise requirements.
An appropriate quote.
The translation price list provides initial guidance. Legal translation quotes account for subject area, language pair, volume, deadline and agreed review stages.
Certification or a particular form of attestation must be expressly agreed. ISO certification does not replace it.
Your individual quote and agreed scope apply to your project.
Explore price listsQuestions & answers
Why does the target country matter?
Legal terms can mean different things in different legal systems. The target country, field of law and intended use help the specialist team agree suitable equivalents and any necessary explanations.
Can you support successive contract versions?
Yes. Longer-running matters can use fixed teams covering both language directions, agreed terminology and existing translations. Scope, changes and deadlines are agreed for the project.
Is a legal translation automatically certified?
No. Specialist translation and certification are distinct services. Tell us the receiving authority’s requirements so we can clarify the appropriate scope.
Client references from zappmedia
A selection of our clients and partners.
Legal subject areas and project workflow
Business service Pricing / rates Delivery times File formats Data transfer Confidentiality FAQ
Every country has its own laws, whose interpretation reflects the legal understanding and cultural conventions of that language community.
A successful legal translation therefore depends above all on examining a source-language legal concept for analogous concepts in the target jurisdiction and adapting it as closely as possible. This requires comprehensive knowledge of the legal systems in both language communities, meaning both the source-language country and the target-language country.
zappmedia translates legal texts into all languages.
Translations into multiple languages are processed in parallel and completed at the same time.
Prices: Our translation agency delivers legal translations of the highest quality at competitive market rates. See information on pricing here.
Legal terminology in a global context
The formation of supranational economic unions such as the EU, EAEU, OPEC, ECO or ASEAN and global trade agreements such as EFTA, NAFTA, CETA, AFTA and APEC multiplies demand for legal and contract translation worldwide. At the same time, national legislation is increasingly harmonised. This creates new linguistic challenges for legal translation. An accurate translation must now account for national legal systems in the source and target countries as well as global terminology trends in European and international law.
Specialist language expertise
In addition to sound knowledge of the relevant legal systems, translating legal texts requires considerable language expertise and precision. Patent and legislative texts in particular are often masterpieces of linguistic acrobatics, following strict stylistic rules and using specialist vocabulary with great precision. Transferring these linguistic balancing acts appropriately into another legal language requires sensitivity and a profound understanding of specialist terminology.
For legal translations, zappmedia therefore uses only highly specialised staff with a legal background gained through a law degree, professional specialisation in a field such as patent, contract, trademark, tax, insurance or real estate law, and years of experience translating legally relevant texts in that field.
Legally relevant documents range from legislation, patents, pleadings and judgments to contracts, general terms and conditions, commercial register extracts, deeds, certificates and educational records. Apart from legislative enactments, these documents also address another specialist field. Patent texts describe how a device works or the composition of a medicine; contracts may govern employment or a property purchase; and a tax assessment explains financial circumstances. Translating legally relevant texts therefore requires subject expertise that complements legal knowledge.
zappmedia’s qualified legal translators have both a legal background and complementary subject expertise. This dual qualification enables them to translate your legal documents precisely and with consistent terminology into the required target language.
Urgent legal translation within deadlines and consistency requirements
Statements of claim and contracts present a particular challenge for legal translation. They often need to be translated at very short notice for fixed hearing or negotiation dates. A single translator may not be able to complete the work within the available time. To meet tight deadlines, zappmedia divides extensive pleadings or contractual documentation among a team of legal translators who work in parallel.
Because these documents usually pass between parties several times during successive negotiation rounds, with changes and additions, zappmedia often assigns a fixed team covering both translation directions to a matter for months. Subsequent versions can then be translated rapidly and consistently between the negotiation languages and translated back again. Alongside meeting deadlines, consistency throughout numerous document versions is essential. zappmedia addresses this with modern translation software, ensuring terminological and stylistic consistency throughout multi-stage document cycles and successive revisions.
Our clients are primarily based in Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, Cologne, Hamburg, Stuttgart and Düsseldorf.
Specialist legal fields
With more than 20 years of industry experience, zappmedia covers the full range of legal translation:
Contract law Patent law Trademark law Insurance law Tax law Real estate law Family law Employment law Criminal law
Data security
Our information security management conforms to ISO 27001. Agreed access and transfer processes support confidential handling of your data.
We treat all our clients’ data and files as confidential. Highly confidential files are marked “classified” throughout processing. Project data is available only to staff directly involved in the project. Client data is stored exclusively on our own servers in Germany.
Use our business service with clearly structured workflows.
Download the “zappmedia specialist brochure on legal translation” as a PDF
Your project. Your quote.
Send us your source material, target languages and preferred deadline. We clarify the requirements and quote for the services your project needs.