Given my experience handling Traditional Chinese legal translations, I didn’t expect much back-and-forth in the Traditional Chinese translation of this Articles of Association (AoA).
The reviewing lawyer, a senior Hong Kong practitioner, had his own terminology preferences, which I hadn’t been aware of. When I received his revisions, I was taken aback. I had heard that some older-generation lawyers preferred working on paper, but this was my first time experiencing it firsthand. Instead of making tracked changes in Word, he handwrote every edit on the printed translation and scanned it back. He carefully refined word choices, manually marking every recurring term instead of simply requesting a find-and-replace.
After three rounds of careful refinements, he was finally satisfied with every detail. The process took time, but seeing how a seasoned lawyer fine-tuned legal language with such dedication gave me a deeper appreciation for the craft of translation.