Similarly to academic articles and books and conference papers, as well as court opinions (i.e. reasoned judgments, concurrences and dissents) and party briefs, I have translated commercial legal advice given in writing by lawyers to their clients in various fields of business and other human activity.

The selection of a translator for written legal advice is not something to be done haphazardly in reliance on low rates, enthusiasm and tall promises. Rather, you need to take a realistic look at the translator’s qualifications and what they can do, and how well they can do it.

The same goes for speed. Many lawyers suffer from unnecessary urgency connected with poor planning and a sense of personal importance — not being denied (even if the first idea is not very reasonable), not being made to wait, etc. That is the lawyer’s downfall, with potentially disastrous consequences. The clients — and the lawyers themselves — deserve better. In addition to being reputed one of the most qualified legal translators for Polish (or for English in Poland), I am also one of the fastest, if not the fastest. If I say it cannot be done faster, then it truly can’t. Ethics matter.

During the almost sixteen years of my professional career, I have translated quite a lot of court judgements coming down from the highest rungs of Poland’s judiciary — the Constitutional Court (sometimes called ‘Constitutional Tribunal’), Supreme Court, Supreme Administrative Court, and Courts of Appeals, as well as the lower tiers (district and regional courts, provincial administrative courts), international courts such as the European Court of Human Rights, the Court of Justice of the European Union, and more, including arbitration.

Unlike recitals and holdings in less important cases, which can to some extent be dealt with as mostly terminological tasks (but simplified substitution by a beginner is still ill-advised), court opinions (majority opinions, concurrences and dissents), typically called ‘reasons’ or ‘justifications’ in continental parlance, require a translator who is familiar with — and preferably a proficient user of — Polish and English legalese, capable of wielding it with both accuracy and grace. For example someone who has written pleadings and articles of their own, in addition to being an experienced legal translator (the latter is important because experienced counsel and scholars could still fail to avoid pitfalls someone with specific translation experience would be better positioned to avoid). A high degree of writing skill is required, including the ability to write with precision, clarity and persuasive force. And that is something not everyone can do, or at least not on the same level.

I have also translated briefs, pleadings, appeals and other party submissions, as well as witness statements and affidavits. Before becoming a translator, I wrote a few of my own. This affects my outlook and intuition, allowing a better feel of the author’s intention and situation, needs and goals.

I have translated numerous contracts relating to business organizations — company articles and charters (and other formation instruments), share-purchase (sale) agreements, financing and loans, developer contracts, insurance contracts and more, including various forms of collaboration such as business partnership, joint-ventures and SPVs; also corporate policies, prospectuses, all sorts of reports, stock-exchange disclosures, presentations for investors (and other stakeholders), as well as texts relating to human resources, ethical codes, disciplinary actions, audits, financing, compliance, AML (anti-money laundering), PR (public relations), CSR (corporate social responsibility), employee councils, as well as litigation and administrative procedures relating to corporations and other business entities.

I can thus provide a range of translation going beyond just the work of a business entity’s legal department, potentially extending to all or almost all departments, depending on the business sector, business size, market situation and several other modalities. This includes to some extent production and even engineering, as well as finance, marketing and sales, all of which is something I have done before, down to sales catalogues, entire online stores, service descriptions and product manuals.

One could hardly count the contracts having passed through my desk during the almost sixteen years of professional practice as a translator.

Those have included contracts relating to company foundation and operation, including equity changes (e.g. share-purchase agreements), as well as all forms of business partnership, developer contracts, loans and other financial contracts, sale of goods and services, employment contracts and many more.

For a translation of this kind, one would do well to choose a translator who is not afraid of dense legalese (nor devoid of a healthy sense of danger, for that matter), including highly technical jargon, as well as complicated and often archaic grammar and syntax, not to mention high-precision use of conditionals, modal verbs and logical operators. As politically incorrect as this sounds, the language often poses a sort of education barrier to many professional linguists and lawyers working with contracts. As you need clarity and precision, you cannot afford bad grammar or syntax, misleading punctuation, fuzzy sentence logic or issues with agreement (ill-matched tenses, genders, conditionals, etc.).

Other than actual contracts, I have also translated texts relating to contract law and the typical matter of contracts — from broadly understood civil law to industry-specific texts (energy, construction, transport, international trade, finance, corporations, etc.).

As a rule, I do not interpret. Although I am technically a qualified court interpreter, more than a dozen years of practice focused on the written word — no paraphrasing, no avoidable reliance on memory but constant verification and comparison of the two language versions — can be quite detrimental to interpreting skills.

One of the exceptions I make are visits at a notary’s office (Polish notaries are sometimes translated as ‘civil-law notaries’ on the basis of the mistaken belief, easily disproved by the example of the British system, that ‘notary’ or ‘notary public’ implies the absence of legal qualifications, which Polish notaries are required to hold). This is because those involve easily managed conversations without long speeches, and often translating as you read from a paper document.

The same applies to visits to certain public authorities, where the conversation revolves around the documents on file (or in the process of being submitted) and the civil servant in charge of the case is prepared to be accommodating and make frequent pauses or repeat things as needed.

Simple matters are something we can arrange on short notice, as long as I have a time slot available. More complicated ones can require more extensive preparation, thus more advance notice or more time booked by the notary or official. To be safe, always try to let me know several days in advance; weeks, if you can.

As for the contents, see Contracts — as those will usually be contracts, typically transactions involving company shares or real estate but also typically notarial things such as powers of attorney and authentication of signatures.

I began my translation career translating thousands of pages of terms of reference, instructions for tenderers, technical requirements and all sorts of detailed rules on eligibility, guarantees, bid bonds and good-performance bonds (securities/collaterals), questions from tenderers and answers from clients (‘contracting authorities’), appeals, and even technical attachments.

The contracts being handed out through those tenders and occasionally other procedures (e.g. RFPs) usually involved construction in the energy sector, e.g. CCGT (combined-cycle-gas-turbine plants) in CHPs (combined heat-and-power plants) and transport (roads, toll gates, railways, rail tracks, train sets, locomotives, wagons, cars, and more).

I have also translated other documents relating to public finance, such as research grants, scholarships and business grants and subsidied (relating to e.g. accelaration), including academic research on the subject.

Texts I have translated for lawyers include the PR and marketing side of a firm’s activities, such as bios, practice descriptions, service offerings and specific proposals, and more.

I am always pleased to be able to contribute to a Polish firm’s growth through the inclusion of a greater share of foreign clients in its client mix, and I am happy to do the same for English-speaking firms desirous to set up a branch in Poland or attract Polish-speaking clients, or just be able to serve a Polish client better whenever one turns up.

BigLaw firms will typically also need a certain amount of corporate and marketing translation in order to keep the business harmonized across the jurisdiction, and that is also where I can and will be happy to help.

This does not happen every day, but I’ve had the opportunity to translate texts relating to Catholic social teaching, including papal teaching (especially on migration), as well as the activities and history of monastic orders and societies of religious life, canon law, Bible studies, Catholic academic activities, as well as homilies and conference papers.

For such texts, mere interest in the subject and enthusiasm will not suffice. A certain amount of familiarity — often difficult to gauge from the perspective of someone less familiar with Catholic theology, ecclesiastical organization and culture — is indispensable. It is easy for quite significant errors to crop up if the translator is only vaguely interested in religious issues in general, without specific awareness of and sensitivity to Catholic issues.

I also have some experience translating texts used in charitable activities similar to those in which missions are involved, especially the education of children, health-care, psychological assistance and humanitarian relief involving children in poor countries and countries affected by warfare.

Almost since the beginning of my translation career, my clients have included legal sholars and those dealing with other fields, often but not always at the intersection of law — historians, philosophers, literature scholars, architects, philologists and even theologians. From short articles, even just the abstracts, to those spanning several-dozen pages, or entire books — I have translated quite a lot of publications for them.

I have also translated texts relating to academic life — for degree conferrals, grant requests and reviews, university histories, biographies of famous scholars (such as the jurists of the nineteenth century and the interwar era), and more.

Though I did not ultimately pursue an academic career myself, having written only several articles and finished my doctoral studies without submitting the dissertation (something I would eventually like to remedy at some point), I have a bit more understanding of a scholar’s needs than without this experience. You should definitely take a look at those of my testimonials that were written by scholarly clients.

Bottom line, I should be a good fit and am always happy to work with scholars and universities. We definitely need to get in touch!

Public authorities are rarely my direct clients. There is usually an intermediary involved, typically a translation agency. Often, the client is not the authority in charge of the proceedings but a party (directly or through counsel) — appellant, applicant or someone who is weighing their options and considering participation in a complicated procedure.

What is characteristic of the work of civil servants is a high level of formalization and everything being regulated by procedural administrative law (formerly one of my top interests), as well as internal government policies and EU law, and otherwise many of the same things a corporation has to contend with — administration, HR and payroll, compliance, even PR and marketing; essentially, everything that relates to the daily functioning of the institution in addition to its statutory mission.

From boring paperwork and bureaucracy (not so boring to me), through inspiring texts contributing to the promotion of the region and its sights and highlights, typically the domain of local governments, or the same thing on the national level, to conference speeches and papers — I am well-positioned to help, and it would be difficult to come up with something I had never translated the like of before.

My translations have been used by, without limitation, central authorities, government agencies, quangoes, local governments, embassies and consular missions, including foreign authorities, especially in charge of child affairs. The brunt of the translations, of course, pertained to the administration of justice — the workings of the court system — in line with my education.

I am always happy to assist, but please do all you can to give me a specific, individual and concrete opportunity to actually work with you, rather than inviting me to participate in a tender with a dozen or more other language companies — something I normally cannot afford to do due to the extremely uncertain investment of a significant amount of time.

Pro bono — and sometimes on a commercial basis — I provide translation for non-government organizations, typically helping children in some way (education, health-care, safety, shielding from abuse or mitigating its consequences). I have also translated for a major ecological organization (at least one that I can remember) and civil-society NGOs, as well as industrial bodies.

Non-government organizations typically operate in the same fields government organizations do, though of course their focus and perspective are different. Thus, my comprehensive experience in translation for all sorts of public authorities, from all sectors of the economy and administrative law to constitutional law and human rights, international law and so on, can come in very handy. It will be difficult to surprise me with anything you have to translate, and, if needed, I will typically be able to give you a highly expedited deadline.

Significant end users of my translations include companies that make other companies or manage them. The texts I translate span all stages and aspects of a company’s life, from the idea, business plan, financing and incorporation to liquidation or, unhappily, insolvency. On the legal side, this involves company law, commercial law, public business law, all sorts of administrative law, finance, taxation, sometimes more classical iterations of civil law, and whenever a company gets a guardian appointed for it in Poland, that technically falls under family law. A bit more distantly from black-letter law, this includes matters relating to corporate governance, policies, PR and CSR, relationships with shareholders, investors, business partners, vendors, customers, employees and other stakeholders, HR and payroll, and more, even down to marketing and sales for some of my clients.

I have translated copious amounts of text in company articles and charters, share-purchase (sale) agreements, insurance or developer or other contracts, as well as those relating to all forms of business collaboration, including joint ventures and SPVs; corporate policies, prospectures, all manner of reports and submissions, disclosures relevant to stock-exchange, the Excel things, and the Power Point things.

One of the first industries I dealt with as a translator was energy. Early on, I translated tons of procurement paperwork such as contract announcements, calls for tenders, terms of reference, instructions for tenderers, technical and other requirements from the client/contracting authority, and all sorts of attachments, some of them quite technical. At some point, I would take pictures of power plants even on holiday trips (thankfully, I never had my camera confiscated even in the Middle East).

Later, wind farms came (on land and sea), along with other renewable sources (‘RES’), as well as texts relating to decarbonization/low-emission transformation, including ecological issues. Thus, for energy companies (and sometimes transport companies), I translated not only network codes, connection terms, construction paperwork and so on but texts on the flora and fauna. I translated much the same things for ecological organizations too.

Similar topics appear in translations done for the mining, transport and construction industries — incidentally, most of what I’ve translated for them, as well as energy, has involved construction in some way — and all sorts of translations relating to public authorities and civil society.

If you work in energy and use Polish-English or English-Polish translations, you have to drop me a line!

In the earliest years of my translation career, construction tenders were an important source of work, claiming a large share of my time. Those usually involved the construction, renovation or expansion of energy or transport infrastructure, so power units/blocks, railways, stations, gates and more, as well as developers’ and investors’ activities (from residential estates to supermarkets). I have also translated interdisciplinary articles for architects and urban planners, typically at the intersection of law. Add to this countless OSH (occupational safety and health) instructions, construction regulations, property valuations and notarial deeds relating to property transactions. Thousands of pages in all, and I’m waiting for more. If you work in construction or real estate and need Polish-English or English-Polish translation, we have to get in touch.

Since the beginning of my translation career, I have translated voluminous amounts of text — piles of texts, more like — involving either the transport sector or some transport-related aspects of e.g. the construction, renovation or expansion of facilities belong to other industries (especially energy). This means thousands of pages relating to roads and railways, including highways, toll infrastructure, railway networks and rolling stock (train sets, locomotives, wagons), multimodal transport, community transport (commute), and more. Most of my experience lies at the intersection of transport and construction, but not all. Hurry to listen to my war stories before I forget them all! Joking aside, if you work in transport and could use a Polish translator, I could be your guy.

I’ve translated thousands of pages of text relating to the activities of banks, insurance companies, stock exchanges and all sorts of financial institutions and supervision authorities, as well as documents relating to corporate financing, investment financing, even the physical production of money and securities, as well as individual tax rulings (interpretations). This means not only legal texts or the ‘Excel stuff’ but also plenty of the ‘Power Point stuff’, such as nice presentations for investors and stakeholders. My other interesting assignments covered the impact of Covid-19 on insolvency and reorganization, involving payment delays and stays of enforcement, negatively affecting the liquidity of companies and forcing some of them out of business through no fault of their own.

It is worth emphasizing that clauses relating to insurance, securities, collaterals, loans, guarantees, etc., are found in pretty much all large contracts (sale/purchase, distribution, business partnership, contracted works, essentially any commercial contract, not to mention public procurement), of which I have translated more than I could count, and this experience also bears fruit when I have to translate something that focuses more on the specific topics.

Related fields include anything to do with administrative law (this is especially relevant to taxation, at least in the Polish system), as well as certain areas of civil and commercial law and public business law, not to mention public finance (tenders, grants, subsidies and other forms of aid).

I have also translated a certain number of academic publications and teaching materials for economists and researchers involved in finance.

I use the terms rather loosely. At some point in my career, I translated a large number of documents relating to the situation of Polish migrants in the UK, some of them suffering from family problems, addictions and poverty, thus incurring the interest of social workers, councils and ChildServe.

I have also translated quite a lot of text for NGOs assisting children in one form or the other, in circumstances such as missions (combined with education, health-care, etc.), refugee situations or warfare, as well as texts — mainly for lawyers — relating to the situation of children in public and private international law (nationality/citizenship, ius sanguinis vs ius soli, statelessness, international protection, asylum, refugee status, parental responsibility/custody, care, visitation, travelling and more).

During the first half of my life, IT was probably my most important hobby. I coded, tinkered with hardware, wasted my youngest years playing computer games and surfing the Internet. Much has changed since them, but apart from contracts, tenders and other legal, administrative and business sides of IT (construction, renovation or expansion of facilities, infrastructure; employement/outsourcing agencies, SaaS contracts, SLAs, EULAs and other licence agreements, etc.), I sometimes translate more technical texts as well and can tell commands from strings. At some point, I was involved in software localization, though I never developed a taste for it. I have also translated some text relating to video games and games on the phone. In my very distant past, I volunteered for several years as a journalist on a gaming portal, writing the news and reviews, interviewing developers, training new editors and creating the tools for the work.

Being more of an arts sort of person than sciences, I lack the easy understanding of biology and chemistry that is needed for more advanced strictly medical translation. Nevertheless, I have translated several articles, mostly on a popular-science level rather than academic.

Most importantly, however, I have translated many contracts relating to clinical research (recruitment, screening, case reports, informed consents, blind trials, control groups and more), medical/health insurance, as well as legal provisions governing informed consent, and articles exploring the activities of medical disciplinary boards (called ‘medical courts’ in the Polish system). Sometimes, medical aspects pop up in criminal litigation, family law and other legal areas.

My religiously themed translations include several academic works for an experienced Biblical scholar (referring heavily to the Greek texts), some sermons for a Catholic bishop, some administrative matters for religious superiors, as well as articles on Catholic social teaching (mostly pertaining to migration) and history of the Church itself and the various religious organizations. Works I have translated for secular historians have covered, among other things, the regnum–sacerdotium conflict in the Middle Ages, including the papal-imperial contest for power (of which the investiture conflict was an important part).

I have some knowledge of Latin, am not entirely foreign to Greek, and have a good understanding of canon law in relation to marriage cases (such as the mental incapacities under canon 1095 and the Augustinian bona composing the essence of matrimony as they relate — through exclusion — to complete or partial simulation under canon 1101(2) or fraud under canon 1098). I am also more familiar than the average layperson with Church organization, hierarchy, titles and styles and other things that are important when translating a text professionally and needing to use proper terminology and phrasing in the target language rather than merely conveying the gist of the matter.

Bottom line, if you have some Catholic stuff(™) to translate, I am your guy. I will not refuse other denominations to the extent oru beliefs are compatible or at least not strikingly at odds. There is less room for tension when simply discussing history or architecture or even approaching the theology from a more descriptive point of view.

I do not translate poetry or fine prose, bar certain highly exceptional situations, typically involving short quotations or pro bono work. During the almost sixteen years of my translation career, I have, however, often accompanied cultural institutions and media companies (press, film) on their legal, administrative and business journeys.

I have translated contracts relating to copyrights and moral rights, entrepreneurial rights and other intellectual-roperty rights, as well as tenders, contests and more, and some academic articles on various aspects of intellectual-property law.

I have also translated for museum and other exhibitions, especially historically themed. My other translations included articles for literature scholars and a book for a philosopher researching film.

To some extent, therefore, the translation assistance I can provide goes beyond legal, administrative, financial or other bureaucratic affairs, making me more useful overall and reducing the need to look for additional translators.

Other than sometimes translating for translation companies and agencies’ house needs (contracts, websites, etc.), the lion’s share of my translation work has reached the end client through a translation agency.

Thus, I have a good and intimate understanding of agencies’ work and that of project managers, a good working relationship with them, and am, generally speaking, a good translator to work with as an agency, provided that old-fashioned human contact is still on the table rather than the processes being fully automated, staff being uninvolved, owners staying aloof, etc.

As an agency, you would also need to have realistic financial expectations in order to work with me. I am not necessarily above your budget ceiling, but do not expect some of the most qualified translators to also be some of the cheapest, and throw in a lot of added value in the form of unpaid additional services, and give you discounts, and give you preferential treatment, and combine that with drastically shortened, barely achievable deadlines. At some point, a reality check is needed, and the one-sided ‘letter to Santa’ mentality has to give way to a spirit of mutual collaboration for mutual benefit.

With apologies for bringing this up, as an agency you should be honest with your clients and also your translators, which means you cannot conceal important facts from them in the hope of getting the client to give you the work and getting the translator to do it by withholding or especially distorting the sort of information that could reasonably affect their decision, such as the type of service (does it include proofreading or not), the translator’s qualifications (level of specialization; native or not, etc.), the client’s expectations (standard or elevated), the client’s attitude and way of communication if the client is involved in the process (problem client, history of past conflict, payment difficulties, etc.), and so on and so forth. I am mentioning this because a lot of agencies do cut corners by being less than honest with their clients, down to flat out false or misleading information, and that always leads to problems.

Matters such as DTP and typesetting, as well as secretarial services such as making scans, need to be covered on your front.

I use Trados, and I can give you the memory files from your projects, but I avoid using translation memories to which other translators have contributed — I want to avoid contributing to the creation of Frankenstein/patchwork texts teeming with terminological, stylistic, logical and other inconsistencies, which are inevitable when several different individuals (rather than a team working as a collective, which is obviously almost never done in practice, unlike what is suggested to clients on agencies’ websites) work on different fragments of the same text. Newspaper cutouts (blackmailers’ letters) come to mind.

As you can see, working with me comes with certain caveats (mostly relating to a certain threshold of reasonability, honesty and acceptable standards, as well as human contact), but the quality and timeliness will more than make up for them in most cases.

Since the very beginning, an important part of my client mix has been my fellow freelance translators. Random accidents, illnesses, conflicting obligations, tiredness and other reasons — e.g. clients needing a different language, different field than the usual, necessitating the participation of a different translator — have prompted colleagues to turn to me for assistance, which I have appreciated greatly. I find fellow translators to be some of my best clients.

On the other hand, many of my ‘normal’ clients have to me on the recommendation not of prior clients but translation professionals who could not help them for time, language, specialization or other reasons. To colleagues, I am the sort of translator you can safely and confidently recommend to your own clients when you are out of time or strength, need to rest or tend to family matters, or find that the text, after all, exceeds your command of English or Polish or familiarity with a legal or other field I cover, or simply outside of your comfort zone, despite what you previously had thought. Or when you know up front that you can’t take a client or prospective client’s project but don’t want to turn them down completely. Your reputation is safe with me.

Do note, however, that if, instead of referring a client to me, you take the project yourself and outsource it to me, you will need to pay me even if the client does not pay you, and problems with the client that are not my fault will be your responsibility, not mine. For example, inability to contact the client for questions or explanation, unco-operative attitude, unreasonable changes (e.g. by non-professional ‘proofreaders’ or ‘reviewers’ who are intermediate foreign learners the language or grossly unfamiliar with the rules of their own language and undeterred by the fact), and so on and so forth. I am mentioning this because not all colleagues, not always take responsibility for unreasonable clients as outsourcers.