Corporate and Commercial Translation Dubai

WHICH FORUM

Which authority is the document actually for?

This is the question that decides everything else. The same shareholders’ agreement can need a certified Arabic translation, a certified English one, or none at all, depending only on where it is going. Corporate clients lose the most time here — not on the translation itself, but on discovering late that the file was prepared for the wrong forum.

Onshore courts and government departments — Arabic

Dubai Courts, the Abu Dhabi Judicial Department, the other emirate courts and the Federal courts conduct proceedings in Arabic. A foreign-language contract, board resolution, audit report or foreign judgment filed with them is expected to arrive with an Arabic translation produced by a translator listed with the Ministry of Justice. The same expectation runs through the notary public, the Department of Economic Development and the Land Department.

DIFC and ADGM — English

The DIFC Courts operate in English, and documents filed with them are filed in English. That is why a company operating inside the DIFC or ADGM often never needs an Arabic version at all — until the moment it steps outside. The DIFC Courts’ own rules require that a claim form served inside the UAE but outside the DIFC be accompanied by a certified Arabic translation.

Crossing between the two

The crossing point is where corporate files most often stall. An English-language DIFC or ADGM judgment being enforced through the onshore courts has to be presented in Arabic, and so do the contracts and evidence behind it. A company that has run entirely in English for years can suddenly need its whole documentary history translated at the moment it decides to enforce.

Free zone authorities — it varies

Free zone registrars differ from one another and change their requirements over time. Some accept English filings for internal purposes; the same document may still need Arabic once it is used before an onshore authority, a bank or a court. The safe order of operations is to confirm the receiving authority’s current requirement first, then translate once for the strictest destination in the chain rather than translating the same document twice.