Translation of Court Materials and Litigation Documents

TARGMANEBI translates statements of claim, statements of defence, evidence, expert and audit reports, and court and arbitral decisions - for attorneys, law firms, in-house legal departments and private individuals. We start the work with an NDA, build the schedule backwards from the procedural deadline and translate cases of hundreds of pages with consistent terminology.

Terms of cooperation for law firms are described on the for law firms page, and other areas of legal translation on the legal translation page.

Which documents we translate

Confidentiality: the NDA comes first

Litigation materials often contain information whose leak would do more harm than the dispute itself: trade secrets, financial data, personal information, internal correspondence. Our working rules:

• An NDA before we receive the files - on your firm's form or ours;
• Restricted access - only the translators and the editor assigned to the case work on it;
• Secure transfer - we receive large cases through a secure link or a data room, not in a messenger chat;
• No public translation tools - we never upload the text to public online services;
• Retention period - after the project ends, we keep or delete the files as agreed.

Our rules in detail: confidentiality.

The procedural deadline: a schedule from the last day

A missed deadline in court cannot be undone. That is why, on a large case, we build the schedule backwards from the filing date:

1. Priority documents - the claim or appeal that must be filed on time is translated first;
2. Key evidence - the annexes the claim refers to directly;
3. Supporting material - correspondence and background documents, in stages.

A standard document - a judgment, a summons, a claim of a few pages - is ready the same or next day. A case of hundreds of pages is delivered in parts on an agreed schedule, so your team can start working from the very first batch.

Hundreds of pages, one terminology

When a case runs to 300 pages and several translators work on it, the main risk is inconsistency: in one annex "Claimant" becomes "mosarchele" (claimant) and in another "momchivani" (complainant). To a court these are two different procedural statuses.

• Before work starts we draw up a terminology glossary - the parties, the bodies, the procedural terms, the contractual definitions;
• One editor checks every part before delivery;
• Figures and dates are checked separately against the original;
• Page references - if the claim refers to "Exhibit C-14, p. 7", the same reference in the translation must point to the right page.

If your team already has a list of case terms or earlier translations, we include them in the glossary, so the new documents match the old ones.

Electronic evidence and correspondence

In modern litigation a large share of the evidence is email, WhatsApp and Telegram correspondence, transcripts of voice messages and screenshots. When translating such material:

• We keep the date, time and sender of every message, so the court can reconstruct the chronology;
• Slang and abbreviations are translated by meaning, with the original kept in brackets where needed;
• Emojis and attachments are marked in square brackets - [image], [PDF file] - so nothing is missed;
• Mixed languages (for example, Russian and Georgian in the same chat) are translated together, and we indicate which part was in which language.

Audit and financial reports in litigation

In a corporate dispute an audit report or a forensic examination is often decisive. Such a text requires two kinds of knowledge at once: legal and financial. IFRS terms (Impairment, Provisions, Contingent Liabilities) and the types of auditor's opinion (Qualified, Adverse, Disclaimer of Opinion) must be rendered precisely - a single word changes the auditor's position. In detail: translation of financial statements and audit reports.

Arbitral awards and foreign court judgments

Georgia is a party to the 1958 New York Convention, which simplifies the recognition and enforcement of foreign arbitral awards. Under Article IV of the Convention, an application for enforcement must be accompanied by the award and the arbitration agreement, and, if they are not in an official language of the country where enforcement is sought, by a certified translation.

If a judgment given abroad - a divorce, child support, an order to pay a debt - needs to be recognized in Georgia, the judgment and the confirmation that it has entered into legal force are translated into Georgian and notarized. The original must first have an apostille or legalization in the issuing country.

The defendant is abroad: service of the claim and translation

If the other party to the dispute lives or is registered abroad, the claim, the annexes and the court summons often have to be translated into the language of that party's country, so that service is actually deemed effective and the defendant cannot claim not to have known the content of the document. We confirm the language, the format and the need for certification with the attorney before we start translating.

In such cases a precise translation of the court's details, the case number, the hearing date and the deadline for a response is especially important. One wrong date gives the defendant grounds to have the deadline restored.

Private disputes: family, inheritance, property

Private individuals come to us most often with family and inheritance disputes: divorce, determining a child's place of residence, child support, division of an estate, property located abroad. In such a case the documents often come from different countries - a birth certificate from one country, a marriage certificate from another, a bank statement from a third - and the name has to be spelled the same way in all of them.

Notarization and use abroad

In Georgia court proceedings are conducted in Georgian, so foreign-language evidence must be accompanied by a Georgian translation. If a Georgian judgment needs to be recognized or enforced abroad, notarization of the translation and an apostille or legalization are often required. We agree the format with your attorney before filing. In detail: notarial certification and apostille.

What your team receives on delivery

• The translation in Word and PDF - an editable version for the attorney and a final version for filing;
• Numbered annexes - with the original numbering (Exhibit C-1, C-2), so the claim's references stay intact;
• A terminology glossary - the key terms of the case in both languages, for future documents;
• Translator's notes - illegible passages, obvious errors in the original and ambiguous wording, as a separate list;
• Notarization - for the documents that will be formally submitted to a court or used abroad.

How we start

Frequently asked questions

Related pages