Thai To English Translations And Vice Versa

In reviewing some English translations for a friend's court case, my friend said he never said this or that. There were translations done by an official translation service and by an English speaking lawyer. In both cases, there were completely understandable errors in the translations. The Thai was correct, but the English words either had different denotations and/or connotations.

One example was fairly simple: "took him ...." (when referring to a single instance) from the Thai was translated into English as "always took him..."

The lawyer's "mistakes" are understandable; he could only use the words he knew. The official translation services errors were disappointing because one would expect their abilities would be "perfect". But they are not necessarily so.

So my recommendation is that if your are involved in a serious legal matter, do some double checking if the exact wording of any specific sentence or paragraph is important. And that probably applies to translations both ways.