British jurist and linguist, lawyer publisher, Chinese dictionary Legal and linguistics scholars have for decades lamented the lack of good bilingual legal dictionaries [1], pointing out that legal publishers are reluctant to spend the time or money necessary to create a good legal dictionary [2]. These researchers have written extensively about the shortcomings of multilingual legal dictionaries and have often concluded that most of them are mere lists of words of dubious quality [3]. TransLegal`s Learner`s Dictionary of Law is the only legal dictionary designed specifically for lawyers and law students working in English as a second language. English-speaking lawyers often use an English legal dictionary differently than lawyers who are not native English speakers. Lawyers for whom English is a second language often need to know how to use the word in a sentence, how to pronounce the word, what common mistakes to avoid (e.g., false friends), and the most common collocations (= words that accompany the search word, such as filing a lawsuit or appealing). The TransLegal Law Dictionary has been developed with these specific needs in mind. The TransLegal Learner`s Dictionary of Law is the result of thousands of hours of ongoing research conducted by a team of legal experts and linguists. Each term included in the TransLegal Learner`s Dictionary of Law has been thoroughly researched to ensure that the definitions reflect common usage. Each definition has been graded so that it can be understood by intermediate English speakers. Where more complex language was inevitable in definitions, this language was defined in parentheses. Corpora such as the British National Corpus, the Corpus of Contemporary American Language and Onecle d.com`s collection of legal documents were used to print bank entries and provided a selection of examples of contemporary use as well as common collocations. In developing the additional sections Common Annotations and Errors, as well as examples and illustrations collected by TransLegal lawyers and linguists during their teaching and material development, authoritative corpora and guides on contemporary use (e.g. garner`s Dictionary of Modern Legal Legal Usage) were used.
The relevance of the results displayed after a search is one of the cornerstones of a successful search database. TransLegal ensures that the results returned when searching for a legal term are accurate and relevant by manually linking exercises, videos, dictionary entries, contributions and other legal documents in English to the relevant terms. This means that TransLegal does not use algorithms or other automated systems to predict relevance. Instead, TransLegal`s legal-linguistic experts manually compared each database entry with the relevant legal terms to ensure the results were highly relevant. Using leading local language legal dictionaries and other resources, the partner university identifies local legal terms that are essential for inclusion in the search function. English translations, or almost equivalent translations, should already be included in the TransLegal dictionary for most of these terms. However, this work is essential to identify the missing terms (phase 4). The German Legal Dictionary (DRW) is a comprehensive dictionary of historical legal terminology in German. It lists the legally relevant vocabulary not only of New High German, but of all varieties of West German languages and the different stages of their history from the beginning of written documents to the 19th century.
The project was initiated in 1897 by the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences and is now carried out by the Heidelberg Academy. Through links to relevant legal terms, language exercises and videos, the online dictionary provides users with quick access to highly relevant resources and documents. For example, exercises related to English terms returned when searching for a term in the local language provide the user with direct access to TransLegal`s online courses and the functionalities provided therein. Videos and sound recordings also provide the user with valuable tools for pronunciation assistance. The word on the net is that it is difficult to find a good online dictionary or glossary for legal translations, but the German English online dictionary LEO is probably as good as any other, if only for contributors` discussions. I would have to agree. The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) is a guideline used to describe the achievements of foreign language learners in Europe and increasingly in other countries (e.g. Colombia and the Philippines). It was produced by the Council of Europe. Its main objective is to provide a method of learning, teaching and assessment that applies to all languages in Europe. Our corpus-based dictionary contains definitions classified at level B2 of the CEFR.
With simple language to clarify terms rather than simplify them, complex legal concepts are made more accessible to English learners. The CEFR provides a common basis for language teaching in the key areas of curriculum development, the design of teaching and learning materials and the assessment of foreign language competences. One of the key achievements has been to develop a comprehensive set of descriptions at the level of language proficiency components at all levels across a range of competencies. For example, a B2 level English learner can perform a number of relatively complex tasks, including clarifying questions after a presentation, understanding the general meaning of routine and non-routine correspondence, and writing reports and correspondence. The overall goal of the project is to create the best and largest multilingual legal dictionary in the world. In addition to TransLegal`s online resources available to students and faculty, TransLegal will provide academic partners with other legal and linguistic documents in third-party English to assist them in their translation work.
