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The World Law Dictionary English may be the common language of the world, but the Common Law is not the common law of the world.

Some of the world’s leading law faculties have joined together to create an online database of legal terminology, all linked to a single English dictionary of law, with the aim of making it easier to understand and communicate legal concepts in different languages.

The overall aim of the project is to create the world’s best and largest multilingual law dictionary.

At launch, which is planned for January 2016 for the first few languages, there will be 10,000 English legal terms in the dictionary.

Academics in the field of law and linguistics have complained for decades about the shortage of good bilingual legal dictionaries 1 pointing out that legal publishers are reluctant to spend the time or money required to produce a good legal dictionary 2. These scholars have written extensively on the shortcomings of multilingual legal dictionaries, often concluding that most of them are mere word lists of dubious quality 3 .

TransLegal and its university partners believe that in this era of international trade and commerce the world needs a large and sophisticated online multilingual law dictionary in which the many legal languages of the world are linked in a single law dictionary to the lingua franca of international business, English.

This is why we are now creating a single online database, which will allow users to engage in discussions of the meanings and consequences of legal terms in their languages and jurisdictions based on a common work. For example, a Chinese lawyer representing a Chinese client entering into a distribution agreement in Hungary would be able to gain an understanding of Hungarian legal concepts in a discussion with local Hungarian counsel as these concepts are defined in the World Law Dictionary in English with the essential benefit that his own Chinese legal concepts would also be translated, defined and compared with English in the same dictionary, thus making possible a comparison of the Hungarian and Chinese legal concepts relevant to these lawyers.

Obviously, each country has its own laws and legal concepts (legal terminology), many of which cannot be translated into English by simply using “equivalent” Anglo-American legal terminology. Yet business persons around the globe must understand the laws of the countries in which they do business. Thus, the lawyers who help them navigate these local laws must be equipped with language their clients and in-house counsel can understand.

As English legal terminology becomes more widely used internationally, the meanings of English legal terms become more established both in international commercial practice as well as in judicial decisions. This widespread use and stability, in turn, makes it easier for international business people and public servants to choose English when drafting agreements and other legal documents and harder to choose any other language. By thoroughly defining the legal terms of other languages and comparing them to English, these legal terms become clearer and more understandable and therefore easier for international parties to accept. Consequently, this dictionary would also have the benefit of strengthening the many legal languages of the world.

The World Law Dictionary is guided by the following lexicographical principles:

The legal languages of the world should track the lingua franca of the business world: English. A multilingual dictionary of law should serve as a linguistic bridge that ensures accurate communication between speakers of different languages. The dictionary should not only provide translations of foreign legal language terms into English and vice versa (communicative purpose), but also include a comparative law analysis that reveals the degree of functional equivalence between the foreign legal concept and the Anglo-American legal concept (cognitive purpose). The dictionary should provide references to relevant sources of law and linguistic context, which clearly identifies the legal systems of the source and target languages (e.g. whether US versus UK, or German versus Austrian). Where the foreign legal term or concept has no functional counterpart in English, then this fact should be clearly stated and a new term should be created in English (neologism) based on a uniform descriptive system. Such neologisms should be identified as such to avoid confusion. A multilingual dictionary of law should use a single, baseline language to explain, and a single analytical method to compare, critical legal terms and concepts of different countries. The quality of the English entries should be vetted and guaranteed by a team of experienced lawyer-linguists, who have practiced law in various Anglo-American jurisdictions, developed legal English courses with prestigious academic institutions and have worked extensively in the legal translation industry and by legal practitioners and academics in those foreign language jurisdictions who confront those Anglo-American legal terms and concepts in their everyday work. The source of the entries should also rely on the state-of-the-art software that ranks and quantifies word searches. The quality of the foreign language entries, the translations and the comparative law notes on functional equivalency should be guaranteed through the scholarship of leading foreign law faculties. The dictionary should be written specifically for its primary users: non-native speakers of English; e.g. at a B2 level on the Council of Europe’s CEFR scale. The dictionary should be online and easily searchable using the latest technology. The dictionary of law should have sub-field classifications and filtering options. The dictionary of law should serve as a training platform to teach visitors to the site on how to use the English legal terms through online language exercises and learning materials. The dictionary should continue to evolve over the years, and should be continuously updated and improved to track changes in the laws and legal systems. The dictionary should provide the opportunity for lawyers and law students around the world to contribute their expertise on particular entries through “wiki” functionality.

1 Gerard-Rene de Groot & Conrad J.P. van Laer, The Dubious Quality of Legal Dictionaries, 34 Int’l J. Legal Info. 65, 65 (2006); Dennis C. Kim-Prieto, En la tierra del ciego, el tuerco es rey: Problems with Current English-Spanish Legal Dictionaries, and Notes toward a Critical Comparative Legal Lexicography in Law Library Journal ().  2 Dennis C. Kim-Prieto & Conrad J.P. van Laer, The Possible Dream: Perfecting Bilingual Law Dictionaries by Distinguishing Better Examples from Bad, International Journal of Legal Information; Summer, Vol. 39 Issue 2, page 12  3 Gerard-Rene de Groot & Conrad J.P. van Laer, The Quality of Legal Dictionaries, an assessment, Maastricht Faculty of Law Working Paper /6, page 9.