ABSTRACT
A methodology for the creation of a database multilingual legal dictionary aimed at EU citizens who by virtue of their general and linguistic knowledge are ‘semiexperts’ is proposed. The author argues that such a project is all the more feasible given the degree of commonality between the basic legal concepts of French Law, German Law, Italian Law and even UK Law. The traditional distinction between lexicography and terminography is rejected on the basis that all lexicography is to a greater or lesser extent specialist. The starting point for every entry should be the concept, and should progress from this global level to the local level (level RI ODQJXDJHZLWKD µPLQLPDOGH¿QLWLRQ¶ LQVHUWHGEHWZHHQ WKHRQRPDVLRORJLFDO and semasiological levels. The author also sets out a list of desiderata for a legal terminological database including the indication of hyponymic relations, the limitation of grammatical information, the provision of typical collocates and so on.
