RAK ICC Award Won, RAK Courts Cannot Enforce It Yet

You spent months in a RAK ICC arbitration. The tribunal sat in English, your lawyers argued in English, and the award came back in your favour. Then your enforcement lawyer in Ras Al Khaimah asks for one thing before filing: an MOJ-certified Arabic translation of the award. The win is real. It just cannot move through the local court yet.

This gap surprises a lot of claimants. The arbitration and the enforcement run on two different languages, and the document that proves you won is written in the wrong one for the court that has to act on it.

The arbitration is English, the court is Arabic

RAK International Corporate Centre (RAK ICC) handles international arbitration, and those proceedings are often conducted in English by agreement of the parties. That is fine for the tribunal. The problem appears at the next stage.

To actually collect — to freeze an account, seize an asset, or register the award — you go through Ras Al Khaimah Courts. RAK Court of First Instance and RAK Court of Appeal operate in Arabic, like every UAE court. The court reads the Arabic version of your award, not the English original. A foreign-language document submitted without a certified Arabic translation is treated as unofficial and returned at filing.

So the English award stays valid the whole time. What is missing is the bridge between the arbitration you won and the court that enforces it.

Why “certified” is not the same as MOJ-certified

This is where a second, quieter problem hides. Claimants sometimes already have an English-to-Arabic translation — done by the arbitration secretariat, an in-house team, or a translation agency. It looks finished. It carries a stamp. At the RAK court counter, it may still come back.

UAE courts accept translations from a translator individually licensed by the Ministry of Justice, carrying that translator’s personal MOJ stamp and licence number on every page. An agency stamp or an overseas sworn-translator seal does not carry an MOJ licence number, so the court cannot verify it.

If you are unsure which one you are holding, our MOJ vs certified translation guide walks through how to tell them apart before you file.

What actually needs translating

An enforcement application is not just the award page. The court usually needs the surrounding documents the application relies on, so the file hangs together in Arabic.

In practice that means:

• The award itself — the operative decision and reasoning.
• The arbitration agreement — the contract clause or agreement that gave the tribunal authority, often part of the underlying contract.
• Key exhibits — the invoices, agreements, or correspondence the application points to.

Translating the award alone and leaving its supporting documents in English creates a half-complete file. The cleaner path is to scope the full set once, so nothing bounces back for a missing Arabic page mid-process.

One MOJ licence covers the whole country

A common worry is that a RAK matter needs a translator physically in Ras Al Khaimah. It does not.

The MOJ certification framework is federal. The same translator licence — ours is MOJ Licence #701 — that satisfies Dubai Courts satisfies RAK Courts, RAKEZ, and other UAE government entities. There is no separate emirate-level translator registration to chase. That also helps when a dispute touches more than one emirate: a RAK ICC matter with assets in Dubai or Sharjah can use one MOJ-certified translation across those filings, rather than a fresh translation per court.

If your dispute sits on the corporate side rather than enforcement, the same logic runs through RAKEZ company filings, where mainland-linked submissions also need MOJ-certified Arabic. And if you are simply mapping where RAK documents get used, the Ras Al Khaimah legal translation page lays out the courts, RAKEZ, and RAK ICC together.

How to move it forward without losing time

If you are holding a RAK ICC award and an enforcement deadline, the order of operations is straightforward.

1. Gather the full package — award, arbitration agreement or contract, and the exhibits your lawyer references.
2. Confirm what the court needs — not every exhibit always has to be translated; over-translating wastes money and time.
3. Use one MOJ-licensed translator for the whole set so every page carries a verifiable stamp and the file reads consistently.
4. Keep digital and physical copies — the court file needs MOJ-stamped originals, so plan for courier time on top of the translation.

Done in that order, the translation stops being the thing that holds up enforcement and becomes a single step you clear once.

Ras Al Khaimah claimants also have neighbouring options when a dispute crosses borders within the country — see Sharjah translation services and Fujairah translation services if your assets or counterparties sit there.

Send the award before you file

If you have a RAK ICC award you need to enforce, send it to us on WhatsApp at +971 50 862 0217 along with the contract and any exhibits. We confirm exactly which documents the RAK court file needs, give you a fixed quote and timeline before you pay, deliver the MOJ-certified Arabic translation digitally, and courier the stamped originals to your RAK address. The win is already yours — this is the step that lets the court act on it.