ABSTRACT
Twenty years ago, in the early days of a new democratic Czechoslovakia and with the revival of a free economy, a massive need for various (not only legal) texts WREHWUDQVODWHGLQWR&]HFKDQG6ORYDNHPHUJHGWKHLQÀX[RIWH[WVFRPLQJIURP the democratic West had to be translated for information, pedagogical reasons and sometimes to have a binding effect on their potential Czech or Slovak addressees. In general, translators were unprepared for this deluge, particularly when faced with English-language legal texts from the Anglo-Amercian system of law based on the Common Law. Many factors (educational, academic, political DQG VR RQ FRQWULEXWHG WR LQVXI¿FLHQW SUHSDUHGQHVV RI ERWK ORFDO ODZ\HUV DQG translators to produce quality legal translation in those early days. There were neither manuals for legal translation, nor helpful bilingual dictionaries available to ease translators’ burden. However, some Czech lawyers who had studied in the US in the period 1967-692 recalled how useful Black’s Law Dictionary had proven as an aid for understanding and interpreting American Law, and suggested that the American dictionary should be translated into Czech to serve two general purposes – to facilitate the understanding of Anglo-American Law and to assist legal translators in their selection of relevant equivalents.
