Q1035. How to process foreign court judgment translations for legal enforcement in Thai courts?

Answered by the NYC Visa & Translation certified translation team

Foreign court judgments cannot be directly enforced in Thailand — Thailand is not party to any judgment-recognition treaty, so a foreign judgment is only evidence in a new Thai action. That context shapes the translation requirements: the judgment must be translated into Thai in full, including the reasoning, the order, and any dissent, because the Thai court re-examines the merits and the reasoning is the substantive evidence; the translation is certified by a translator acceptable to the court, and the original judgment must be legalised through the chain (home foreign ministry plus Royal Thai Embassy) before filing. Practical points: judgments are long — a commercial judgment can run to dozens of pages, so translation time and cost scale accordingly, and the terminology must be consistent with Thai procedural vocabulary (plaintiff/defendant, claim, counterclaim); where the judgment is from a common-law jurisdiction, case citations are kept in the original form with the court names translated; and a certificate of finality (that the judgment is no longer appealable) should be obtained and translated with it, as Thai courts give weight to finality. For foreign arbitral awards the route is different — the Arbitration Act allows direct enforcement of Convention awards, and the award plus the arbitration agreement require certified Thai translation. Confirm the filing strategy with the handling lawyer before commissioning the translation.