Introduction
A legal translation can match the source word for word and still be wrong. The flaws often surface only when we test each choice against three things: the legal context of the clause, the conventions of the subject field, and the grammar of the target language.

Consider this definition from a commercial agreement (names have been anonymized), together with two Indonesian renderings of it.

Source:
Trademark – any title, trademark, registered trademark, or service mark (including without limitation the ABC Business Partner title and emblem) owned by ABC Corporation, which ABC Corporation may authorize Business Partner to use.

Target 1:
Merek Dagang – setiap hak milik, merek dagang, merek dagang terdaftar, atau merek layanan (termasuk namun tidak terbatas pada hak milik dan emblem Mitra Bisnis ABC) yang dimiliki oleh ABC Corporation, yang dapat disahkan oleh ABC Corporation untuk digunakan oleh Mitra Bisnis.

Target 2:
Merek Dagang – setiap nama, merek dagang, merek dagang terdaftar, atau merek jasa (termasuk tetapi tidak terbatas pada nama dan lambang Mitra Bisnis ABC) yang dimiliki oleh ABC Corporation, yang dapat digunakan oleh Mitra Bisnis atas izin ABC Corporation.

Readers without Indonesian can follow the discussion through the three points where the versions part ways:

• For title, Target 1 uses hak milik (ownership right), whereas Target 2 uses nama (name).

• For service mark, Target 1 uses merek layanan (roughly "service-delivery mark"), whereas Target 2 uses merek jasa (roughly "commercial-service mark").

• For including without limitation, Target 1 uses termasuk namun tidak terbatas pada (roughly "including; however, not limited to"), whereas Target 2 uses termasuk tetapi tidak terbatas pada (roughly "including but not limited to").

Each difference looks minor, yet each stems from a different kind of decision. The first is about choosing the intended sense of an ambiguous word. The second is about which term best suits a commercial legal setting. The third is about how Indonesian joins contrasting ideas within a sentence. Taken together, they show that knowing legal terms is only part of the job; the translator must also read context closely and command the target language.

1. Title: a name, not a property right
The weightiest flaw in Target 1 is hak milik (ownership right) for title. Legal English certainly uses title in a proprietary sense; property lawyers speak of a person's title to land. So the rendering is not impossible in principle. It simply does not fit this clause.

Two senses in the dictionaries
Learners' dictionaries list both readings. In the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English Online, the first entry is a countable noun for "the name given to a particular book, painting, play etc," with the example The title of this play is 'Othello'.

A separate entry, marked as legal and as singular and uncountable, gives "the legal right to have or own something," with the example He has title to the land (Longman, n.d.).

The Oxford Learner's Dictionaries make the same split. Their first entry is a countable noun for "the name of a book, poem, painting, piece of music, etc." Their legal entry, shown with the pattern title (to something/to do something), covers the right to own something, typically land or property, and also the document that proves it.

The example given is He claims he has title to the land (Oxford, n.d.).

Two conclusions follow. The ownership reading is real, so hak milik is the right choice in the right clause. But that reading belongs to legal usage and has a recognizable shape: title to plus the thing owned. Phrases such as legal title, clear title, marketable title, transfer of title, and title to the property call it up naturally.

Letting the clause decide
Because title has several senses (ownership, name, designation, heading, rank), a dictionary can only tell us what the word can mean. What it does mean in a given clause is something the clause itself must tell us, and that is the only question a translator needs answered. Here, five features of the clause point to the "name" sense.

1. How the word behaves grammatically. Nothing follows title with to. Instead, the word comes after any and sits in a series with three countable nouns: trademark, registered trademark, and service mark. It reappears in the ABC Business Partner title, where a proper name picks out one specific designation. That is the behavior of the countable "name" sense. Oxford does record a countable legal use, but the clause never mentions anything that is owned, so the proprietary reading has nothing to attach to.

2. The company it keeps. The other members of any title, trademark, registered trademark, or service mark are all signs that identify a business or its offerings. Read as name – trademark – registered trademark – service mark, the list hangs together. Read as ownership right – trademark – registered trademark – service mark, it mixes a legal relationship with the very signs that such relationships protect.

3. The pairing with emblem. In the ABC Business Partner title and emblem, a verbal identifier is matched with a visual one, in the same way as name and logo or designation and badge. Replace title with "ownership" and the phrase ABC Business Partner ownership and emblem no longer makes sense, because an emblem naturally goes with a name, not with an abstract right.

4. The phrase owned by ABC Corporation. Target 1 ends up saying hak milik … yang dimiliki oleh ABC Corporation, or "ownership … owned by ABC Corporation." Grammatically this can pass, but semantically it is awkward. The clause lists things the company owns; Target 1 turns one of those things into the act of owning.

5. The verb use. The clause allows ABC Corporation to let the Business Partner use the listed items. Licensing, franchise, and partnership agreements routinely permit the use of names, marks, logos, and emblems. Nobody is permitted to "use" ownership; ownership is held, acquired, transferred, or given up.

The verdict: nama
Each clue alone might be debated; together they leave little room for the ownership reading. Nama fits the clause. Hak milik would fit a different clause, but not this one, and recognizing that difference is at the heart of legal translation.

2. Service mark: choosing between jasa and layanan
The next point of difference is merek layanan in Target 1 versus merek jasa in Target 2. Indonesian has two everyday words that can translate service, and they are not interchangeable in every setting. For this clause, jasa is the stronger choice.

A commercial setting calls for jasa
Everything around the term is commercial: marks, registration, corporate ownership, and a business partner's licensed use. In Indonesian, jasa is the word that business and the professions use for services sold or supplied for payment, as in jasa hukum (legal services), jasa keuangan (financial services), jasa konsultasi (consulting services), jasa penerjemahan (translation services), and penyedia jasa (service provider). A merek jasa therefore belongs comfortably alongside merek dagang.

Where layanan falls short
Layanan is perfectly good Indonesian, so the problem is one of fit rather than correctness. The word leans toward service delivery, particularly help or facilities offered to users and the public, as in layanan publik (public services), layanan masyarakat (community services), layanan pemerintah (government services), and layanan administrasi (administrative services). Its focus is the act of serving people, not a service offered in trade.

Keeping the list consistent
With jasa, Target 2 reads nama, merek dagang, merek dagang terdaftar, atau merek jasa, a list in which every item speaks the language of commerce and intellectual property. The gain is not merely stylistic; the term now reflects the economic role of the source concept. An equivalent that is available is not automatically the one the context prefers.

3. Including without limitation: why tetapi, not namun
The last difference has nothing to do with legal terminology and everything to do with Indonesian grammar. Target 1 translates including without limitation as termasuk namun tidak terbatas pada, and the trouble is the word namun.

Standard Indonesian treats namun as a conjunction between sentences. It typically begins a new sentence and sets it against the one before:

Perusahaan telah memenuhi seluruh persyaratan. Namun, izin tersebut belum diterbitkan. (The company has met all requirements. However, the permit has not yet been issued.)

Tetapi works differently: it coordinates contrasting elements inside one sentence. Studies by Indonesian linguists, indexed in the Ministry of Education's Garuda portal, classify the use of namun within a sentence as an error and recommend tetapi instead. English offers a close parallel in however versus but; an English reader would likewise stumble over "including, however, not limited to."

One sentence, one conjunction
In including without limitation the ABC Business Partner title and emblem, the contrast never leaves the sentence. Indonesian therefore needs a within-sentence conjunction, which yields termasuk tetapi tidak terbatas pada. The pair below shows the difference:

• Correct: Ketentuan tersebut mencakup, tetapi tidak terbatas pada, penggunaan nama dan lambang perusahaan.

• Incorrect: Ketentuan tersebut mencakup, namun tidak terbatas pada, penggunaan nama dan lambang perusahaan.

(In English, both say: "The provision covers, but is not limited to, the use of the company's name and emblem.")

Commas are not the cure
Setting namun off with commas leaves its function unchanged. What matters is not the punctuation but which conjunction the slot can take. The only way to keep namun is to break the idea into two sentences:

Ketentuan tersebut mencakup beberapa bentuk kekayaan intelektual. Namun, cakupannya tidak terbatas pada bentuk-bentuk tersebut. (The provision covers several forms of intellectual property. However, its scope is not limited to those forms.)

Such a rewrite, however, no longer mirrors the structure of the original clause.

Habit is not a grammar rule
Formulas such as including but not limited to and including without limitation turn up in almost every contract. When a faulty Indonesian version is copied from one document to the next, its sheer frequency starts to make it look acceptable. Frequency, though, is not correctness. The task is not to reproduce English syntax in Indonesian, but to carry the legal meaning into Indonesian that is grammatically sound.

What the three errors have in common, and what they do not
The example is useful precisely because the three flaws come from different places, and fixing each demands a different skill.

1. Title → hak milik is an error of interpretation. A legitimate legal sense was chosen without checking whether the clause actually invokes it. Avoiding it takes careful disambiguation and attention to legal context.

2. Service mark → merek layanan is a question of terminological fit. Readers will understand it, but layanan captures the commercial setting less precisely than jasa. Avoiding it takes familiarity with the conventions of the field.

3. Termasuk namun tidak terbatas pada is an error of target-language grammar. The legal concept was understood; the conjunction was simply put where Indonesian does not allow it.

Avoiding it takes a firm command of Indonesian syntax.
A professional legal translator needs all three skills at the same time. Legal knowledge does not guarantee good Indonesian prose. Fluent Indonesian does not guarantee the right reading of an ambiguous English term. And a good grasp of both languages does not guarantee awareness of what a particular commercial field conventionally says.

Staying close to the source is not the same as copying it
Faithfulness is measured by meaning and legal effect, not by how closely the words line up. Picking hak milik because the dictionary offers an ownership sense is unfaithful when that sense is absent from the clause. Picking layanan because it is one translation of service misses the mark when the clause is about trade. Picking namun because the English formula expresses contrast loses accuracy if the Indonesian sentence breaks a grammar rule. A defensible rendering has to answer three questions: what the source really says, which term the legal and commercial field expects, and how Indonesian expresses that meaning correctly and naturally.

Target 2 as a whole
Target 2 holds up on every front. In meaning, nama joins the marks and the emblem as one more identifier. In commercial terms, merek jasa matches the business nature of the services. In grammar, tetapi supplies the within-sentence contrast the formula needs. In legal terms, the clause now says something clear: ABC Corporation owns a set of commercial identifiers, among them the ABC Business Partner name and emblem, and it may let a Business Partner use them. This is why a translation should be judged clause by clause, not word by word.

Closing thoughts
Mistranslations are not always the result of misunderstanding. Quite often, the translator picks an option that is available but not suitable. It is true that title may mean ownership, that service may become layanan, and that namun signals contrast. Each of these facts holds on its own, but a clause is never read on its own terms alone; its context settles which option is right, and here it rules out all three.

Correcting this one definition required interpretation, terminology, and grammar working together. That, in short, is the translator's job: establish what the clause means in law, choose the terms its field expects, and write that meaning in target-language prose that is correct, natural, and legally coherent.

Dictionaries show the range of possible meanings. Context narrows that range to one. A command of the target language then decides how that one meaning should be expressed.

References

https://garuda.kemdiktisaintek.go.id/documents/detail/5286157

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English Online. (n.d.). Title. Retrieved October 8, 2026, from https://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/title

Oxford Learner's Dictionaries. (n.d.). Title. In Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. Retrieved October 8, 2026, from https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/title_1

A version of this article was first published on the author's website: Doelkitep Penerjemah.