Q1109. What legal steps govern foreign court judgment translations for local enforcement?

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-reciprocity treaty, so a foreign judgment must be re-litigated as evidence in a new Thai action, where it serves as strong evidence of the underlying claim. This legal reality shapes the translation work: the foreign judgment and the key underlying documents are translated into Thai and certified for the Thai court filing, and because the Thai court re-examines the merits, the translation set usually extends beyond the judgment to the contract, the correspondence, and the evidence that proved the claim. The translation workflow: the judgment is translated in full — the findings of fact, the legal reasoning, and the dispositive order — with the court names, case numbers, and party names transcribed consistently; the judgment's finality must be evidenced (a certificate of finality or the appellate history), and that evidence is translated too; and the whole set is legalised through the chain (origin-country authentication, Royal Thai Embassy legalisation) before the Thai translation is certified. Practice points: the Thai court filing is in Thai — the complaint and all exhibits follow Thai civil procedure; the foreign judgment's reasoning matters because the Thai court assesses whether the foreign proceedings were fair (proper service, opportunity to defend) — translation of the service evidence and procedural record supports this; and for arbitration awards, the contrast is stark: foreign arbitral awards ARE directly enforceable under the New York Convention, so where a dispute is still pending, the forum choice (court versus arbitration) determines the enforcement path. Coordinate the translation set with the Thai litigation counsel from the start.