About this ebook
Chapter I invites the reader into the mind of the professional legal translator. It traces, step by step, the challenges that arise in real work and the strategies used to address them, illustrated with concrete examples. The author hopes this journey will offer a practical roadmap to the legal translator’s central ambition: a safe passage to “the opposite shore,” where the translated text can be properly effective.
Chapter II continues the journey inside the world of legal translation at the United Nations. It sets out the distinctive challenges of that environment, discusses how practitioners try to overcome them, and offers an appraisal of the international system’s performance—its successes, its failures, and the reasons behind both. The analysis builds on the author’s first-hand experience working within that system.
Chapter III widens the focus to the broader landscape of legal translation in international settings, using the translation of international criminal law (ICL) as a central example. It recounts the author’s experience leading the team that translated the Lexsitus Commentary on the Law of the International Criminal Court (CLICC), and reflects on the collaboration between the translation team and the subject-matter experts team.
Chapter IV turns to a vital, and increasingly urgent, dimension of this journey: the ethics of legal translation. It considers the ethical duties of legal translators in a profession now facing existential pressures, not least the rapid advance of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.
The appendices present practical samples of translated legal texts—including the two versions of the Rome Statute—together with a selection of the “translator’s notes” that appeared in the Arabic footnotes to Lexsitus-CLICC.
To keep the book alive and evolving, the author has created a dedicated webpage for each chapter on his website. There, readers will find additional materials, updates and corrections where needed, and a channel for questions and comments. In this way, the book is conceived not as a closed product, but as a living work that grows through ongoing interaction with its readers.
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About the author
Fathi M. A. Ahmed is the Arabic Translation Team Leader at the Center for International Law Research and Policy (CILRAP). He is a recognized Arabic-English-Arabic translator specializing in international law and international organizations.
He holds a master’s degree in translation studies from a UK-based university and completed his undergraduate studies at Helwan University, both with summa cum laude honours. He later pursued a diploma in translation at the American University in Cairo (AUC), where he was hired to teach legal and UN translation over the period of twelve years. During his time at AUC, he also co-developed translation courses focused on legal, UN, and other specialized areas. Prioritizing practical experience over academia, Ahmed took additional language courses at AUC, the UN Secretariat, and various UN agencies to enhance his specialized language skills.
Ahmed has translated several works by the late Professor M. Cherif Bassiouni, including Crimes Against Humanity, Modalities of International Cooperation in Penal Matters, and Human Rights in Arab Constitutions. He has also written multiple publications on translation-related issues.
Having passed numerous international language exams, he has provided translation, terminology, and editing services to the UN Secretariat, including in New York, Geneva, Vienna, and Nairobi, various UN specialized agencies such as the World Health Organization (WHO), the WHO Academy, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), as well as the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (OTP-ICC).
He has also worked with international non-governmental organizations, including the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the International Center for Asset Recovery of the Basel Institute on Governance, and the Siracusa International Institute for Criminal Justice and Human Rights (previously named International Institute of Higher Studies in Criminal Sciences).
Ahmed’s expertise in providing language support in international investigations is well established and highly regarded. He served at the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI), a pivotal body established to investigate allegations of human rights abuses and violations during the events of the 2011 Bahraini protests. During his tenure at BICI, Ahmed collaborated closely with Professor M. Cherif Bassiouni, a renowned figure in international criminal law, as well as other leading experts in the field. This collaboration provided him with invaluable insights into the complexities of international law and the crucial role that precise translation plays in ensuring that investigations are thorough, transparent, and accessible to a diverse audience.
He also worked with the International, Impartial, and Independent Mechanism for Syria (IIIM-Syria), offering language services in the investigation of serious international crimes committed in the Syrian Arab Republic particularly by Daesh and other non-state actors.
An active member of the Association Internationale des Traducteurs de Conférence (AITC) and a member of the American Translators Association (ATA), Ahmed is a strong advocate for multilingualism and has provided specialist advice to the newly established WHO Academy in Lyon. His achievements in the fields of teaching and translation have been recognized with multiple certificates of appreciation from the AUC, the UN, IIIM-Syria, and Professor Bassiouni.
One of Ahmed’s most notable accomplishments as CILRAP’s Arabic Translation Team Leader is overseeing the comprehensive translation of the Commentary on the Law of the International Criminal Court (CLICC) on the Lexsitus platform.
This project involved a meticulous approach to ensure that complex legal concepts and terminologies were accurately conveyed in Arabic, making this essential resource comprehensible to a broader audience.
Under Ahmed’s leadership, the translation team navigated the intricate nuances of international law, collaborating with legal experts and linguists to maintain the integrity and precision of the original text. The successful completion of this project was crucial not only for enhancing legal scholarship in the Arab world but also for supporting practitioners in their daily work within international criminal law.
For more information, please see: https://www.cilrap.org/ahmed and https://www.fathiahmed.com/
