ABSTRACT
Bilingual legal dictionaries (BLDs) are useful in so far as they add explanations to their word lists but they still disappoint in that they do not fully meet all the requirements of legal translators. There are only a small number of outstanding, comparative BLDs that provide the comparative and contrastive material necessary for the translator to make informed decisions about equivalence. Since addressing the question of equivalence of legal terms is a fundamental desideratum of BLDs, WKLVSDSHUZLOOIRFXVRQDVDPSOHRI¿YHFRPSDUDWLYH%/'VIRU(XURSHDQODQJXDJHV to assess whether and to what extent information permitting the determination of equivalence is provided. In so doing, this chapter seeks to evaluate the content and structure of the encyclopaedic information found in our sample as such information should enable the user to identify and, more importantly, to assess degrees of equivalence of legal terms used in different jurisdictions.
