Content: introduction. I. Chapter. Legal texts

2.2.
 
Private Legal Documents. 
Last but not least, legal translation may have as object documents regulating 
relations among privates, such as contracts, wills and leases, and court documents, 
e.g. statutory declarations, pleadings and judgements. We can talk about private 
international law when private situations mobilise the application of more than one 
national law at the same time. Provided it is impossible to apply unilaterally national 
law, we should understand which is the legal system that should regulate the specific 
case. If when talking about international agreements we were in the public sphere of 
law, when dealing with privates we enter the international private law domain that 
is actually a branch of national law, dealing with transnational private relations. 
Private international law is nothing more than the extension of private national 
8
Translating Law, Multilingual Matters, Topics in Translation, Clevedon CORNU G. (2005), 

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legislation to situations presenting what is known as foreign element. This is the 
reason why it deals simultaneously with two or more national legal systems, and one 
of the reasons why translation is required.
Private legal documents may require translation in different situations and for 
different purposes, and once again aim and context both concur in giving the 
translation a different status. Besides the situations in which two individuals coming 
from different Countries (and therefore probably speaking different languages and 
coming from different legal systems) get together in a court, the most frequent case 
of internationally relevant private documents are contracts. We could affirm, they 
do share a lot of features with international agreements.
Treaties and convention could be considered as nothing but contracts 
stipulated by states, that are to the international legal system as citizens are to the 
national one. This is why we may recognise more or less the same features outlined 
when talking about international legal instruments, in particular concerning 
structure, form, languages and authority. Private legal documents come into being 
as opposed to public texts; hence the distinctive traits concern the involved subjects: 
privates vs. States or international organisations. Yet, private is not synonym of 
individual nor citizen, at least not only. We should therefore put a stress on the 
differences among these terms.
Briefly, the term citizen comes into play as related to state, being it each person 
entitled with rights and duties as established by the national legislation. Individual 
and private are broader terms, which express no relation with a higher entity, but 
once more they are not equivalent: private may refer to an entity including more than 
one individual, as well (e.g. a private company) and comes into being as opposed to 
public, i.e. all that is related to state. Going back to texts, a private legal document 
is usually translated or drafted in more than one language when the contractors speak 
different languages and/or come from different juridical system. This is to warranty 
equal treatment and make the text accessible to both (all) parties. But once again, 
having two or more texts written in two or more languages does not make them 
equal. Their legal status changes according to the will of the contractors. They may 

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agree that the translation and the original text have equal force in the court of law in 
case of litigation, attaching them with a prescriptive function, or else specify 
nothing, so that translated texts will be considered just for informative purposes, 
giving them no legal status at all. Private legal documents are product of one national 
system, and therefore follow the rules imposed by that particular jurisdiction, this is 
especially true for contracts.
By definition, an agreement has to fulfil some requirements in order to be 
considered a fully legally binding contract, on pain of invalidity: the contract must 
be drafted in the appropriate form (with ‘appropriat of internationally relevant 
private documents are contracts. We could affirm, they do share a lot of features 
with international agreements. Treaties and convention could be considered as 
nothing but contracts stipulated by states, that are to the international legal system 
as citizens are to the national one. This is why we may recognise more or less the 
same features outlined when talking about international legal instruments, in