Tim Elliott
Welcome to Lawgical the UAE’s first and still the only regular legal podcast. My name is Tim Elliott. I’m here with our expert legal expert manager partner of the Dubai based legal firm HPL, Yamalova and Plewka here in Dubai Ludmila Yamalova Great to see you.
Ludmila Yamalova
Good to be here with you, Tim, as always. Thanks for chatting with me.
Tim Elliott
So this episode is particularly pertinent to me. I’ve just moved house and I moved because I received an eviction notice within the 12 month period that is legally applicable here in Dubai. Mine was in Arabic. Understandably, it’s the official language of the country. I had to Google translate mine. But that’s the way it has always been and should be, I guess. Am I right?
Ludmila Yamalova
You would think so until recently and that’s exactly why we are having this conversation today because Things seem to be changing before our eyes You are correct that the UAE Arab country the official language in the UAE is Arabic and historically that meant that all official documents were by default issued in Arabic and Any other language was more of a convenience and usually
and that party’s kind of own initiative to have the document translated or another language added to the Arabic. But by de facto, everything was in Arabic and that was the way of life. And in fact, over the years, we’ve seen a lot of these documents being served on parties for the eviction or for a court case filed or for a criminal
appearance and so on and so forth and people often would actually we even had these kind of cases where people would ignore them Because we did not know what was in them. So we did not know what they meant, but that was never an excuse so because the official language was Arabic and therefore that was the The the position was that it is your obligation As somebody who is living in the Arabic speaking country to ensure that whatever documents you receive especially since they’re official documents that you
get them translated and you understand what’s in them. So the obligation was on the recipient and not whoever was issuing the letter. And that obviously is in most perhaps common ways we have seen being used in the context of real estate and eviction notices and other kind of real estate related notices. And often they are in error, they were.
In most cases, they were only in Arabic because that’s the easiest way to do it. You just go to the notary, notary Arabic speakers and they would by default only notarize documents that were in Arabic. So it was the easiest thing to do is just to go to a notary, issue the document in Arabic and that’s basically it. And then from there on, you can move on and serve the document and that’s it. You leave it to the other side to figure out what’s in the document.
Well, that’s how it was until just earlier this month, and we are recording this in March of 2024, we saw a new shift in particular coming from the Dubai Rental Dispute Center, RDC, which is Dubai’s rental court. And in this particular decision, the RDC’s position was that in order for an eviction notice to be valid, it needed to also be in English. And that is because the recipient
of the notice did not speak Arabic. So this is a new principle, and it is a principle that we have seen come from the courts in Dubai. So for the time being, I cannot tell you that it has a more pervasive effect beyond the boundaries of Dubai, but certainly in Dubai, as far as real estate and eviction notices in particular, that seems to be the new principle. Even more interestingly is that decision was appealed in
still confirmed. So as of now, for an eviction notice to be valid, it needs to also be, in addition to Arabic, it needs to also be at least in English.
Tim Elliott
So is this in all cases?
Ludmila Yamalova
No, there is a limitation. So it’s in the event, and the case is like yours. It’s in the event that the recipient does not speak Arabic. So your case would have been a case in point. And that is when you receive an eviction notice and it’s all in Arabic and you do not speak Arabic, in that particular case, the burden or the obligation is on whoever it is that’s issuing the eviction notice, the landlord, for example, to make sure that
the eviction notice is also in language that you understand. So, and that’s also for you as a landlord or to have, to prove to the authorities if this were a challenge before the courts, that you spoke Arabic, for example. So if your argument as a landlord is that, no, the person speaks Arabic, then it’s your burden is on you to prove to the authorities that you actually do speak Arabic.
Tim Elliott
Okay, what happens if the notice is only in Arabic? Take my case as the example.
Ludmila Yamalova
So if a legal notice is served to a non-Arabic speaking tenant, and the notice is only in Arabic, get ready, it is considered to be null and void, which means it’s of no effect. So in your particular case, that notice that was served to you in Arabic only a year ago, the landlord could have waited for a year, and if you wanted to challenge it, you could have challenged it right now and not move out.
on the grounds that, well, that notice was in Arabic only, you do not speak Arabic, and therefore the notice is of no effect, and the RDC, as per the current principle, would have ruled in your favor, and therefore your landlord would have had to serve you a new notice and given you another year for eviction.
Tim Elliott
Surprised is one way of putting it. Shocked is probably a better description to be honest with you. That is a new principle.
Ludmila Yamalova
Indeed, and we are surprised, equal or so, I perhaps would not use the word shock only because I think it’s a great principle and I think it’s kind of exciting in the way because it just shows you what sort of where the at least the Emirate of Dubai is heading in terms of the kind of the government services that it’s making available to its residents and
assigning or moving that obligation on other private parties as well, to make sure that ultimately everybody is properly informed, right? And so if you receive something that is in the language you don’t understand, then I guess the argument is that you’re not properly informed. So it is, but you are correct, it’s shocking the way, it’s still shocking because like yourself, we’ve over the years, and I’ve been here for many years, we’ve seen many, many legal notices. Most of them,
or only in Arabic, and certain people who do not speak Arabic, and they’ve always been relied on and enforced. So this is a brand new principle, very interesting, dare I say even exciting. And it stems from a very recent and final judgment from the RDC court that ruled that an eviction notice which was issued in Arabic only was not enforceable. And this was because the tenant
speak Arabic and the landlord did not submit any conclusive evidence to prove to RDC that the tenant actually understood Arabic in a way that would allow them to understand the contents of the eviction notice. And on that basis, the RDC rejected the landlord’s eviction request holding its null and void. And that’s an actual decision from RDC, a copy of which we have, and it had been appealed
And it was the appeal court or the highest basic RDC court that held confirmed that principle that in the very, so the obligation of the landlord is that the tenant must understand what’s in that notice. And if it’s, even if it’s in official language of the country, if you don’t understand, the tenant does not understand, it’s the obligation is on the landlord to make sure that whatever notice that’s legally issued to them.
is understood by the tenant or the recipient.
Tim Elliott
Which makes sense. Is this a principle that applies across the UAE? Is it limited in any way?
Ludmila Yamalova
It is, for the time being, it’s only limited to Dubai because it is a principle, right? It’s not, it’s not there’s a change in the law. It’s for the time being, it’s just basically a change in the jurisprudence in the Emirate of Dubai. And so, and that’s because it is a decision of the Dubai court. And in this particular case, it’s the rental court. So I would say not only is it for the time being limited to Dubai, but it’s also for the time being, at least limited to rental issues.
So the important lesson for here is that if for landlords, if you want, if you’re issuing any legal notice or eviction notice in particular to tenants who do not speak Arabic, make sure that they also include in the very least English.
Tim Elliott
Okay, it begs the question why I suppose, because I’ve been here for some years, my Arabic is limited to pleasantries, conversational and all the rude words because that’s what your friends teach you, of course, but I understand that that’s not good enough and I accept that obviously Arabic is the first language. So what’s driving this new, what’s the word, approach?
Ludmila Yamalova
But perhaps we’re just entering the new era. It’s not so much that trying to think if there’s anything specific, there’s not been a fundamental legislative change that would mandate this new approach. Perhaps it’s more in kind of a practical realization by the authorities, by the country, to come to terms with the fact that there’s so many…
foreigners that live in this country, many of whom, majority of whom, in all honesty, in all fairness, do not speak Arabic. And so if you want to continue to make these countries appealable and appealing to not just kind of live and enjoy, but also be aware in particular of obligations, that it’s only fair to ensure that whatever communications that issue,
the person, the recipients who are sort of to whom these communications are addressed actually understand what’s in them. So I think and we have seen this again, I haven’t seen this in sort of in terms of any legislative change per se, but in practice what we’ve seen is that for example the notary services, the ministry, a lot of the
let’s say with the court services, a lot of the court services, I mean since the courts have gone online and historically all the courts have only had anything done in the courts in Arabic only. And so when they went online, all those services, online services were only in Arabic. And as time has been sort of moving along, and this by the way, remember with the courts, they’ve only gone online since COVID, so fairly recent. But we have seen as the online systems continue to develop and
that a lot of these services also were becoming available, accessible in English. So, for example, certain parts of the court portal would, not just the courts, but other, similar changes with other government services, let’s say the Ministry of Health. And so, a lot of these tabs, if you will, for lack of a better word, were now also available in Arabic, in English.
Now, some of these services were more limited, and they continue to be more limited than they are in Arabic, but we have seen a visible change before our eyes, how just the portal, the interface with the courts, for example, continued to develop, not only by virtue of having more services available in the online format, but also many more of these services were now becoming at least available in English. So you could, it’s not necessarily to say that you would make…
your request or communications with the court in language other than Arabic, but rather than the information that’s being fed to you that you receive is now accessible also in English. So it wasn’t just even the translation of the website itself, it’s just the specific services would now also be available in English. Other examples we’ve seen with like Ministry of Justice, for example, some of the, even you can even make some requests.
in an English language. You can even, in the Ministry of Justice is basically the federal court system, it even now offers certain, for the time being still limited, but certain court requests to be made in English or in a different language. So, and it’s kind of pre-populated. If you look at the Ministry of Justice, some of their court requests are pre-populated. Let’s say if you wanted to do a power of attorney, you could do it kind of, communicate with the authorities in English. Or if you wanted to,
make a request for a birth certificate. Let’s say in the past it only had to be in Arabic. Now you can actually make that request in English. So it’s more limited, but we have seen it before our eyes. We truly sort of in the thick of the history in the making, we’re seeing it evolve before us in terms of how a lot of these government services are now being more and more offered in English language. We’ve seen that, for example, with them.
notaries these days that will issue POAs in languages, whatever other language you want to include in addition to Arabic. In fact, now there is a new service that we’re testing out that’s coming from the ADJDs, the Abu Dhabi Judicial Department, that now allows you to do POA only in English. So, and also, for example, in terms of even the service of process.
So in the past, whenever there was a case was filed, you would get a notification only in Arabic. So be it from a civil court or from the criminal authorities, you’d only get a notification in Arabic. Now, that same notification will come in two different languages, in English and Arabic. So we have seen over the years, the last few years, a lot of these services in the way that the government and the various government rep…
institutions are communicating with the public in the UAE are now starting to incorporate other, in particular, English language as a kind of a second, almost not official, but kind of a default language. So you know, when I mentioned earlier, there wasn’t kind of a major legislative update. That is true. This is more seems to be kind of by practice. But what we have seen is, for example,
in the criminal procedure laws, and we’ve discussed this before, Tim, in one of their podcasts, that, for example, there is not a requirement that any time anyone makes any statements to the criminal authorities that there’s a translator there, and that whatever statements are assigned by the person who is being investigated, right, that they actually there’s a legal translator that signs on to that statement.
Tim Elliott
Yeah.
Ludmila Yamalova
In the past, we’ve heard a lot of, and we’ve seen a lot of cases where people would, let’s say, be called to the police or prosecution and had to make a statement, and they would sign a document. It was only in Arabic. So now, in fact, that particular aspect of the legal practice has been changed by virtue of an updated criminal procedure law that makes it a requirement for these statements to be signed by an official translator. And without it,
that document can be deemed void. So we’ve seen that kind of aspect of it be changed by virtue of a legislative, an express legislative change, but in terms of kind of the user interface with all other government services, this is the, I mean, we’ve seen it as I may give an example by virtue of how you communicate on certain information that’s accessible on the various government portals, but in terms of actually a legal notice,
for an eviction notice that is now required to be used in or to be also drafted in language other than Arabic if the person doesn’t speak Arabic. That’s the first time we’re seeing this case. So it’s very exciting but at the same time not unusual in light of the changes that I have just described.
Tim Elliott
So let’s sum up what are the main, what should we be taking away from the discussion today?
Ludmila Yamalova
Yeah, so if you’re a landlord and you are considering to file an eviction notice to your tenant in Dubai today, then make sure that it’s just to be sure you should always issue it in Arabic and English language. And I would say that’s even if, for example, your tenant you think speaks Arabic because there’s obviously a lot of Arab…
ethnically sort of Arab people that may live here, but they don’t actually speak Arabic. They may have a very Arabic name, so just don’t make a mistake of thinking that person has an Arabic name, therefore they speak Arabic because just because they have an Arabic name does not mean they speak Arabic. So, and since we’ve seen in this RDC case in particular, in that case, it was the burden was on the landlord to prove that the tenant actually spoke Arabic. So I’d say just to be safe for landlords, they should
issue eviction notices in Arabic and at least English. That being said, it’s interesting to see in this. I don’t have the answer for it yet, but let’s say what if the recipients don’t speak English, but they speak some other language, let’s say Russian or Chinese. So I would say also just to kind of be safe, if there is now we know that the notaries do issue legal documents that are in language other than just.
Arabic and you don’t even need to have a legal translation anymore for these documents. So therefore, you could in theory, let’s say if you’re issuing it to a tenant that you know only speaks Russian, and there are a lot of people like that here now, or Chinese, you know, you may want to, just as a landlord, to issue the eviction notice in addition to the Arabic also. Either include, you could even do English and Russian, or you could just do English, Arabic.
and Russian or Arabic and Mandarin, for example. But in the very least, I’d say right now, based on this court principle, you should in the very least, in addition to Arabic, also use English. So I guess another, so that’s perhaps the main conclusion is just to be on the lookout for more of these kind of developments because the law and the practice are evolving very rapidly, as we have seen and we’ve covered in this podcast many, many different aspects.
of exactly that and that is just one of the most recent developments, which I think is very exciting.
Tim Elliott
We’re recording this on a Wednesday. I moved last Thursday. It’s something I wish I had known that’s for sure That’s another episode of Lawgical eviction notices here in Dubai Arabic and English is now they how they must be served As ever, thank you for listening and watching if you’re with us on YouTube for example And thanks as always to our legal expert managing partner at Yamalova and Plewka in Dubai Ludmila Yamalova Thank you very much
Ludmila Yamalova
Thank you, Tim, very much. Always fun to be chatting with you.
Tim Elliott
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