When Grammar Is Not Enough: Why Legal Translation Requires Logical and Contextual Reasoning

Legal translation is not merely a matter of replacing words in one language with their apparent equivalents in another. A translation may be grammatically correct and still be legally or logically misleading. This is particularly true when prepositions, modifiers, and noun relationships are interpreted mechanically without considering what the provision is actually intended to regulate.

I encountered a useful example of this problem while editing a translation that had previously been completed by another translator. The source text contained the phrase:

Safeguards to the EU SCC

The original translator rendered it into Indonesian as:

Perlindungan terhadap SCC UE

Literally, this can be understood as “safeguards/protection against or for the EU SCC.” At first glance, the translation may appear linguistically plausible. The word safeguards has been translated as perlindungan, and EU SCC has been retained as SCC UE. However, the problem becomes apparent when the phrase is examined logically rather than merely lexically.

The EU Standard Contractual Clauses are not themselves the object requiring protection. They are contractual mechanisms that establish requirements, obligations, safeguards, and protections in connection with certain data transfers and the parties involved. Therefore, interpreting the phrase as perlindungan terhadap SCC UE creates an illogical relationship: it suggests that the SCC themselves are something that must be protected.

For that reason, I revised the translation as follows:

Perlindungan sesuai dengan SCC (Standard Contractual Clauses, Klausul Kontrak Standar) UE

The distinction may appear small, but it is significant. The revised wording makes it clear that the safeguards are provided in accordance with, or under the framework of, the EU SCC. In other words, the SCC function as the governing legal framework or standard according to which the safeguards are established; they are not the object of the safeguards.

The example appears in the editing material as follows: “Safeguards to the EU SCC” was translated as “Perlindungan terhadap SCC UE” and subsequently revised to “Perlindungan sesuai dengan SCC (Standard Contractual Clauses, Klausul Kontrak Standar) UE.”

The Problem Is Not Vocabulary

What makes this type of error particularly instructive is that it cannot be solved simply by consulting a dictionary.

The translator may know the meanings of safeguards, EU, and SCC. The individual words are not especially difficult. The real issue is the relationship between those words.

In legal translation, understanding such relationships is essential. A translator must continually ask questions such as:

• What is being protected?

• Who benefits from the protection?

• What instrument creates or regulates that protection?

• Is a particular noun the object of an obligation, the source of an obligation, or merely the legal framework governing it?

• Does the translated preposition preserve the same logical relationship as the source?

These questions concern legal and linguistic reasoning rather than vocabulary alone.

The Indonesian preposition terhadap establishes a relationship between perlindungan and SCC UE that makes the latter appear to be the object to which the protection is directed. In the context at hand, that interpretation does not make conceptual sense. The intended relationship is instead one of conformity or legal basis: the safeguards are those provided or required pursuant to the EU SCC.

This is why sesuai dengan produces a more coherent formulation.

Prepositions Can Change Legal Meaning

Prepositions are often underestimated in translation because they are short and seemingly simple. In legal texts, however, they can determine the logical structure of an entire phrase.

Consider the difference between the following concepts:

protection against X

protection for X

protection under X

protection pursuant to X

protection in accordance with X

These expressions do not describe the same relationship.

A translator who focuses only on lexical equivalence may overlook this distinction. Yet legal documents depend heavily on relationships: between rights and beneficiaries, obligations and obligors, rules and regulated parties, agreements and governing provisions, or safeguards and the legal instruments establishing them.

The wrong preposition can therefore create the wrong legal relationship even when every major noun has been translated correctly.

Translation Requires Referential Logic

Another useful way of analysing the problem is to identify the semantic roles of the elements involved.

When a legal text refers to “safeguards” in connection with contractual clauses, the translator should determine the referents involved.

The questions are straightforward:

What provides or defines the safeguards?
The contractual framework.

Who or what is protected by those safeguards?
The relevant parties, persons, interests, or data-processing relationships addressed by the contractual provisions.

Are the contractual clauses themselves the protected object?
No.

Once these relationships are identified, the weakness of perlindungan terhadap SCC UE becomes evident.

This type of analysis is especially important in legal translation because legal texts frequently compress complex relationships into short noun phrases. English, in particular, allows nouns and prepositional structures to be combined compactly. Indonesian may require the translator to make the underlying relationship more explicit.

A literal translation may preserve the surface structure while losing the intended logic.

Legal Translation Is an Exercise in Interpretation

This example demonstrates a broader principle: every competent legal translation involves a degree of interpretation.

This does not mean that translators are free to rewrite legal documents according to personal preference. On the contrary, the translator's responsibility is to interpret the grammatical and contextual relationships accurately enough to reproduce them in the target language without adding or removing legal meaning.

That process requires several levels of analysis simultaneously:

Lexical analysis determines what the individual words mean.

Syntactic analysis determines how those words are grammatically related.

Semantic analysis determines what those relationships mean.

Contextual analysis determines which interpretation makes sense within the document.

Legal reasoning determines whether the resulting interpretation is coherent within the relevant legal framework.

A translation can succeed at the first level and fail at the remaining four.

That is precisely why literal accuracy should never be confused with substantive accuracy.

A Grammatically Acceptable Translation Can Still Be Wrong

One of the most difficult errors to detect in translation is an error that sounds perfectly natural.

Obvious grammatical mistakes attract attention immediately. Logical errors are more dangerous because the sentence may read smoothly while communicating the wrong relationship.

Perlindungan terhadap SCC UE is a good example. There is nothing obviously ungrammatical about the phrase. Indonesian readers can understand its structure. The problem is that its structure leads them toward an implausible interpretation.

This is where professional editing becomes particularly valuable.

An editor should not ask only:

“Does this sound natural in Indonesian?”

The editor must also ask:

“Does this actually mean what the source intends?”

And, in legal translation, one additional question is essential:

“Does the relationship expressed in the translation make legal and logical sense?”

If the answer is no, stylistic fluency cannot rescue the translation.

Why Context Must Override Mechanical Equivalence

Machine-like translation habits often arise from an assumption that every source-language preposition has a stable target-language equivalent.

It does not.

The correct Indonesian rendering of an English preposition depends on the semantic relationship it expresses in a particular context. The same English preposition may therefore require terhadap, kepada, untuk, berdasarkan, sesuai dengan, berdasarkan ketentuan, or another formulation depending on its function.

Professional translators must therefore translate relationships, not prepositions in isolation.

The same principle applies to many other apparently simple structures in legal texts:

“rights under the agreement” should not automatically be translated as though the rights were physically “below” an agreement;

“obligations pursuant to the law” refers to obligations arising under or governed by law;

“protection under the regulation” normally refers to protection afforded pursuant to the regulation, not protection directed toward the regulation itself.

The translator's task is to identify the underlying legal relationship and then express that relationship naturally in the target language.

The Role of Logical Reasoning in Translation Quality

This case also illustrates why subject-matter competence alone is not sufficient.

A translator may be familiar with legal terminology and still produce unreliable translations if he or she does not test whether the resulting sentence is logically coherent.

A useful discipline is to perform what might be called a logic check after producing a translation.

Ask:

Who is doing what?

To whom?

Under what authority?

For whose benefit?

What is the object of the action?

What is the governing instrument?

What is the legal consequence?

If the answers implied by the target sentence differ from those implied by the source, the translation needs to be reconsidered.

This method is particularly useful when dealing with agreements, privacy policies, data-protection documents, compliance materials, regulations, and contractual clauses, where a small change in relational wording may significantly affect meaning.

Conclusion

The translation of Safeguards to the EU SCC as Perlindungan terhadap SCC UE demonstrates a fundamental lesson in legal translation: linguistic competence must be accompanied by logical reasoning.

The problem is not that the translator failed to understand the dictionary meaning of the words. The problem is that the translator failed to identify the relationship between them.

The SCC are not logically the object of the protection. Rather, they constitute the legal or contractual framework according to which the relevant safeguards are established. Translating the phrase as Perlindungan sesuai dengan SCC (Standard Contractual Clauses, Klausul Kontrak Standar) UE therefore conveys that relationship more coherently in Indonesian.

Professional legal translation requires exactly this kind of analysis. Words must be understood not only individually, but also functionally: what role does each element play, what does it modify, and what relationship does it establish?

A translator who asks only, “What does this word mean?” may produce a grammatically acceptable sentence.

A translator who also asks, “What does this sentence logically mean in this legal context?” is far more likely to produce an accurate legal translation.