No matter how much this profession might change, legal translation will continue to be in high demand. Clients will continue to need their birth certificates and criminal records translated, and a translator’s (sworn or not) personal certification will continue to be essential, especially in an interconnected world where people and goods cross borders with ever-increasing speed—and all of this involves documentation.
But this much sought-after specialty requires, in addition to extensive language skills, great precision and in-depth knowledge of the legal systems involved, which can be a considerable challenge for the translator. Legal translations cover a wide variety of documents, such as contracts, wills or forms, where conventions and specific terminology can vary overwhelmingly. Sworn translations, which in Spain are carried out by accredited official translators, guarantee the accuracy and legal validity of the translated texts, and therefore the professional translator must apply the highest standards.
To this end, we present the following resources for legal translators.
Multilingual resources:
Perhaps the most useful and recommended resource for specialized translation in general is IATE (Interactive Terminology for Europe), the terminology database of the European Union. We already talked about this database in a previous article, but it is worth mentioning it again in the specific context of legal translation, as it is especially useful for translating everything related to the European Union and its institutions.
Within this genre of translation, it is also recommended to turn to EUR-Lex, a database of European legislation managed by the Publications Office of the European Union, which contains thousands of parallel texts in the official languages of the EU, allowing you to compare terms in context.
Finally, you can always turn to your colleagues by consulting the Proz terminology database, which we have already discussed. This resource has the advantage of allowing active consultation with other translation professionals, but we must also remember that it has the disadvantage of being an open forum with no guarantee of accuracy. It should therefore be used with caution.
Monolingual resources:
Several Mexican legal terminology resources are included here, as they are quite useful not only for translations within said country, but also in the USA, where this variety of Spanish is especially dominant. It is highly recommended not to be overconfident when translating documents into a target language other than one's own geographic variety, as there may be linguistic and terminological differences that may surprise us.
The Mexican Instituto de Administración y Avalúos de Bienes Nacionales offers an accessible yet reliable glossary of institutional terms, while a wide variety of resources, from dictionaries to monographs, can be found in the Biblioteca Jurídica Virtual de la UNAM.
For Spanish we also have the Pan-Hispanic Dictionary of Legal Spanish, which has the advantage of offering a global perspective, without limiting itself to a single country or linguistic geographic variety. The entries indicate the variety to which the term applies and provide a link to the context, which helps to ensure the accuracy of the terminology work.
In terms of English resources, it is also important to adapt to the legal system in which our translation is framed. Therefore, today we present two resources adapted to the legal systems of the United Kingdom and the United States, respectively. The Law Society of England and Wales (officially The Law Society) is the professional association for lawyers in England and Wales, and offers the public a glossary which, although not very extensive, can be considered reliable. The same description can be applied to the official glossary of the U.S. Courts, which will be useful for those working with U.S. clients.
Finally, we would like to include a couple of monolingual legal dictionaries in German and French. Rechtswörterbuch has over 1000 terms and definitions and a list of hundreds of abbreviations. It is organized in thesaurus form showing connections between terms. In French, there is Serge Braudo's Dictionnaire juridique, created by Serge Braudo, a lawyer and law professor. The dictionary is extensive and includes abbreviations, as well as a list of French courts.
Click here to see all our resources for translators and interpreters.
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