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Abstract
The article examines the translation of court documents (indictments, penalty and arrest warrants, court decisions and court orders) and the challenges they pose. The activity of court translators is regulated by law. This unique position entrusts them with a special responsibility. Even if the actual addressees of the translation are unlikely to fully understand the text, the translation must be accurate and complete. This requires a thorough knowledge of both legal systems and an understanding of both legal languages. The present article discusses parts of a court document from a translator’s point of view, analysing the difficulties of translating court names, titles of laws, classification units and standardised formulations. The article contains many examples from the language pair German-Russian but is also comprehensible and of potential interest for translators from and into other languages.