Legal Translation Services of Foreign Language Warnings
We’ve blogged about Colorado medical translation and medical hospital and clinics interpretation services, as well as Denver, Colorado, certified translation and interpreting services for courts and the USCIS and multilingual immigration interview translators. Professional multilingual legal language translation services for manufacturer’s liability cases also play an important role. According to the Restatement of Torts, sellers must provide buyers with ‘reasonable warnings and instructions’ in regards to the risks that exist in their products. Further, these warnings must be understandable to the ‘reasonably anticipated users of the product’. For this reason, warnings in a language other than English may be required where it is foreseeable that likely users do not speak English.
For example, in Stanley Industries, Inc v. W.M. Barr & Co., Inc., 784 F.Supp. 1570 (S.D. Fla. 1992) two Spanish-speaking brothers from Nicaragua accidentally started a fire in the plaintiff’s factory where they were employed after they had soaked rags in linseed oil manufactured by defendant. The label attached to the can of linseed oil had warned of the danger of spontaneous combustion in English, but there was no foreign language translation. The court ultimately ruled that the defendant was liable for failure to provide a foreign language translation of its warnings.
In conclusion, potential products liability issues may be avoided if warnings or disclaimers are given with a foreign language translation whenever the product is being targeted towards a non-English or foreign language-speaking population base.