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Translation for lease signing
Greetings, all.
I'm searching for someone who can translate French to English as I sign a lease on an apartment on rather short notice.
I sadly speak almost no French, but had a somewhat successful showing of an apartment I'd like to rent today. However, once we get down to the legalese and contracts, I'd like someone to accompany me and make sure everything is clear between me and my French-speaking landlords.
Is there a person, or a service, that anyone can recommend for this? I've been taking advantage of a French-speaking colleague to set up viewings but feel bad about asking that person to take time out of her workday to accompany me to a signing and would be happy to pay for someone's services for this.
Thanks in advance for any help you can provide!
Hi there,
Although I am not a professional translator, I do freelance work work in proofreading English texts, translating Frnech/Dutch/German to English, building personal websites and giving basic to advanced traning in Windows and MSOffice. I've been doing this for about 2 years, after a professional career in banking.
I've translated leases before from French and Dutch to English. In Belgium these are pretty standard in any case. In fac you can buy them "off the shelf" in most stationers. Although I've never attanded a lease signing before, I'm happy to do this where my services would be more as interpreter than translator. It would be handy if possible o get a copy of the lease in advance where I could to a quick translation to provide you before the lease signing meeting, just so you have a geneal idea.
Finally, I have a BSc in French, and LLB (British Law Degree), MSc in Law and an MSc in Financial Mathematics. I wento to school in Luxmbourg for 6-18, and have lived on and off in Brussels since 2005.
You can contact me on:
email: markiremonger1@gmail.com
landline: 02 307 0598
mobile: 0479 281315
Cheers
Mark
ps: for private individuals my fee is EUR10 per hour
email:
This may help http://www.immoweb.be/en/pages/Page.cfm?Page=Model.Contracts.htm
take a look for what you want and translate with google, it should give you some idea, if you are really stuck
For advice on contracts, and particularly a lease, you need a notaire/notaris, not a translator. There are plenty of English speaking ones about, particularly in Bruxelles.
There will be a lot of issues that won't appear in the contract itself but are enforceable anyway because the contract is governed by law. A notaire/notaris will take you through those issues and make sure that you understand them. A good example is that, in broad terms, you are responsible for the maintenance of everything within the apartment in exactly the same way as if you owned it.
Apart from signing a lease, you will need to do an etat des lieux so that there is a written report on the current state of the apartment, it's cleanliness, and functioning of appliances. This is very much mportant because an exit check will be done when you leave to see if you have damaged anything. You will typically have to open a blocked bank account with 2 months rent as a deposit (bank guarantee) which will have a double signature lock so I gat the funds will not be released without the owner's signature. I can recommend an expert and am pretty confident that his English would be good enough. Fabrice Fierens, 0499.421.942, 02/771.2402. You can google him and check out his background. He acted for both the owner and the tenant who split the fee, but each party is entitled to use their own expert. Good luck.
