Translation service reviews foreign documents for attorneys

St. Louis Daily Record & St. Louis Countian, Nov 22, 2006 by Angie Hanson

Susanne Evens is in the business of making international communication between lawyers and clients simpler.

"Connecting people is what I love to do," she said. "We network all over the world."

Indeed, Evens, president and founder of St. Louis-based AAA Translation - a translation and global business consulting firm - has made a living out of and established a reputation by linking people through language. With 25 years of experience in the translation industry, Evens established AAA in 2000 and today offers translation and interpretation services in more than 100 languages.

Recently, Evens made AAA Translation more attractive to lawyers who receive mass quantities of foreign paperwork by introducing a new attorney document review service. This service provides lawyers with translators and interpreters who also are bilingual attorneys or legal assistants and have the ability to evaluate legal material to pinpoint what is important and needs to be translated, she said.

"It's an exciting new service that can really save a lot of money," said Evens, a German native who is fluent in five languages. "Lawyers sit on these [papers] forever, and to have all of it translated costs a lot of money."

This attorney document review service is in addition to the document translation and interpretation assistance Evens has been offering since she started German Language Communications - an English/German translation company - when she moved to St. Louis from Germany in 1992. As she acquired more clients, Evens decided to expand her company in 2000 and launched AAA to provide all translation services, more languages and global business development consulting. To ensure accuracy and authenticity in the native tongue, Evens has translators and interpreters available who live in the country of the requested language.

Richard Creech, director of Washington, D.C.-based Esquire Language Services, is the "brains behind" the attorney document review service. Boasting a law degree from Northwestern, a linguistics degree from Harvard and a master's degree from a school in the Netherlands, Creech brings a legal and linguistic background to the joint venture he and Evens are engaged in, combining his legal knowledge and Evens' reputation and client base.

Creech practiced law in Chicago and Washington, D.C., for eight years and has been doing legal translation and interpretation for about six years, until formally founding Esquire a year ago, he said.

"I thought I could bring the legal experience and linguistic expertise together," Creech said. "Law approaches language in a unique way. I thought there was a market for translators with a legal background."

One recurring trend in American litigation are international proceedings that include huge sums of paperwork in a foreign language that are often 95 percent irrelevant to the issue. Lawyers typically hire general translators and interpreters to assist them in litigation practices, but what often is overlooked is the fine language involved in the legal industry that only those who have legal experience understand, Creech said.

"Let's say a German company is suing an American company. They will send over all sorts of e-mails, letters and other papers, which can become millions of pages," Creech said. "What we can do is determine what is necessary and focus our translation energy and services on what is needed.

"That's why having a lawyer or a paralegal in that position is an advantage," he said.

Charles McCloskey, a patent attorney who owns his own firm, Charles C. McCloskey LLC in Town & Country, Mo., has utilized AAA's services for Japanese and Danish translations, and said he was impressed by the quality and timeliness of the company.
"Often when we need her it's in a crunch, and she's come through every time," McCloskey said.

Because McCloskey's firm is geared toward more domestic business, he has yet to try the new document review service. However, for lawyers who handle larger volumes of international business, it would be a valuable tool, he said.

Disadvantages facing the translation industry, however, are translation companies that offer lower rates for mediocre service. Most clients do not realize the difficulty involved in translating and interpreting, and in order to receive the best product, the cost is going to be higher, Creech said.

"The cheapest translation is probably never the best," he said. "It's not an area you want to be skimping on. It's particularly a problem in the U.S. It takes skills beyond knowing just two languages."

In order to overcome this obstacle and keep growing, Creech and Evens plan to educate clients on the value of quality translation. Evens has offices on the West Coast and in Germany and collaborates with Creech on the East Coast but wants to gain more clients, especially in the Midwest, she said.

These days, international business is rapidly developing and so is the demand for legal translation services, including attorney document review, Creech said.