Free Dictionary english spanish for Law
Main Entry: The legal Dictionary
Dictionaries in General
Roy M. Mersky & Donald J. Dunn, Fundamentals of Legal Research 430 (8th ed. 2002): “Law dictionaries provide definitions of words and phrases. A short definition is given for each
word or phrase. These definitions of legal terms are derived from a variety of sources, usually
explained in the introductory matter of the dictionary or in the entries for each word. Some legal
dictionaries also provide a citation to a court case, a reference that traces the etymology of the
word or phrase, or a definition from a learned treatise.”
It is
the position of this author that useful entries in law dictionaries feature, at a minimum, significant or
illuminating court citations, etymological tracings or definitions from learned treatises, and perhaps
all of the above when appropriate.
Big Questions
Bryan A. Garner, Legal Lexicography: A View from the Front Lines, Eng. Today, Jan. 2003, at 33, 33.
His rubric consists of the following questions:
1. To what extent should a law dictionary be a dictionary- as opposed to a legal encyclopedia?
That is, to what extent should it merely define terms, as opposed to expansively discussing
the law relating to those terms?
2. To what extent is a law dictionary a work of original scholarship-as opposed to a compilation
of judicial definitions?
3. To what extent should we worry about the formalities of defining words-that is, about getting
the lexicography right as well as getting the law right?
4. To what extent can the modern lexicographer rely on the accuracy of predecessors?
5. How do you find the material to include in a dictionary?
Professor Mersky’s comments before the Sixth Annual
Conference of the International Association of Foreign Linguists in 2003:
Dictionaries have been with us for so long that most of us take them for granted. Reputable
law dictionaries and specialized law dictionaries can be invaluable resources to legal scholars. Though we may have our personal preferences or quibbles with a particular style or presentation
used by individual lexicographers, it is often assumed that legal dictionaries are-for the
most part-scholarly, precise, and authoritative. The validity of these assumptions is critical
since a dictionary definition can influence a verdict.
Roy M. Mersky, The Evolution and Impact of Legal Dictionaries, Legal Reference Services Q.,
2004, no. 1, at 19, 20.
………
Jorge Vargas’s Mexican Legal Dictionary and Desk Reference50
serves as a case in point: much of what makes this volume useful exists outside of
the dictionary entries. Vargas’s dictionary offers a number of reference features
that are integrated into, and enhance user understanding of, its detailed entries,
entries that also offer direct citation to sources used in the definitions.
¶35 For example, and in stark contrast to the entries in other bilingual legal
dictionaries, Vargas includes as front matter two “Guides of Terms,” or equivalency
lists, one providing Spanish-language access to English-language terms of
legal practice, and the other providing English-language access to Spanishlanguage
terms of legal practice. Furthermore, as befits a “Desk Reference,”
Vargas has included useful appendices at the end of his dictionary which provide
English-language and Spanish-language access to sample legal documents, such as
powers of attorney, collective bargaining agreements, articles of incorporation,
extradition forms, and family law documents; and diplomatic data, such as locations
of Mexican consulates within the United States, and U.S. Department of
State intelligence on the Republic of Mexico.51 These appendices also include a
list of U.S. case law treating Mexican law, and a list of the “Best Mexican Law
Sites,” among other materials. Reviewers, however, have noted the ancillary material in the
Vargas dictionary, and the “Guide to Terms” in particular, as being both helpful and a hindrance. See,
e.g., Keith S. Rosenn, Book Review, 36 U. Miami Inter-Am. L. Rev. 355, 356 (2005) (reviewing
Vargas’s Mexican Legal Dictionary and Desk Reference) (“[T]hese guides, while helpful, make the
process of looking up a word needlessly cumbersome.” ); see also id. at 359 (“The Vargas Dictionary
is a very useful tool for anyone in the United States dealing with Mexican law. . . . Unfortunately, its
format makes it difficult to use, particularly if the user is unfamiliar with the legal vocabulary in both
Spanish and English . . . . ” ).
Much of the authority backing the Mexican Legal Dictionary and Desk Reference emerges from the
work that Vargas put into his Federal Civil Code of Mexico. Although entries in the Mexican Legal
Dictionary appear slightly more encyclopedic than someone such as Garner might prefer, the reader’s
ability to refer from Vargas’s Mexican Legal Dictionary to his Federal Civil Code of Mexico provides
a depth of access that Romañach aspires to, yet ultimately fails to reach. Among other distinctions,
the Vargas work is presented with the source Spanish code on one page and its English translation on
the facing pages, while the Romañach work is almost exclusively written in English. Compare Jorge
A. Vargas, The Federal Civil Code of Mexico: Bilingual Edition (2005), with Julio Romanach,
Jr., Federal Civil Code of Mexico: Translated into English, with an Introduction and Index
(2003).
…..
(( Francisco Avalos offers for legal translation: “[B]efore people and nations
can conduct international trade they must be able to communicate with another.
There must also exist rules and uniform commercial documents that can assure the
transfer and payment for goods in an orderly and timely fashion.” 14 By describing
the fundamental elements of a set of international trade norms and laws in the
context of a discussion of legal translation, Avalos directly proposes that standards
of legal translation are as fundamental as standards for international trade rules. He
concludes his remarks by suggesting that these standards of translation are found
in bi- or multilingual legal reference works: bibliographies, encyclopedias, practice
guides, and dictionaries.15
14 . Francisco Avalos, Legal Translations: Some Tips, Lecture at the San Diego State University National
Language Resource Center (July 24, 1998) (transcript available at https://www.law.arizona.edu/
Library/Research/Guides/legal_translations.cfm?page=research). Avalos cuts to the quick of this
issue:
The rules and uniform documents for international trade are being created by the various governments
and organizations such as the National Law Center for Inter-American Free Trade. When
it comes to the ability to be able to communicate with one another, not too much is being done at
the moment. How can a multi-million [dollar] business transaction take place if one party speaks
Spanish and the other party speaks English? And, to further complicate matters there is the legal
factor involved. The legal system of one country may be as different from the other country’s
legal system as Spanish is from English.
Id. After observing that law firms may “be willing to spend thousands of dollars in Federal Expressing
documents around the world, but will be reluctant to pay hundreds of dollars for a quality translation,”
Avalos notes that there “is a great need for a national corps of well trained legal translators to educate
the U.S. business world about the importance and difficulties of legal translating, and to provide these
required translations.” Id. To be sure, the costs that Avalos notes would be alleviated by judicious
acquisition of English-Spanish legal dictionaries; and in turn, the costs of acquiring such items would
be mitigated by a methodology for evaluating these items.
15 . See id. (“A legal translator should assure access to a law library, university library or a large public
library. These libraries should be seen as part of the tools a legal translator will need. Law librar[ies] ))
….
2 Over the past ten years, publishers have released more than thirty EnglishSpanish
legal dictionaries. However, only a few of these titles have been collected
by more than one hundred libraries worldwide.
As of September 25, 2007, the ten most common
English-Spanish law dictionaries found in the world’s libraries were as follows:
• l Solis et al., West’s Spanish-English/English-Spanish Law Dictionary (1992) (Libraries
Worldwide: 392)
• l Louis Adams Robb, Dictionary of Legal Terms: Spanish-English and English-Spanish (1955)
(Libraries Worldwide: 322)
• l Guillermo Cabanellas & Eleanor C. Hoague, Butterworths Spanish/English Legal
Dictionary = Diccionario JurÃdico Español/Inglés Butterworths (1991) (Libraries Worldwide:
318)
• l Benmaman et al., Bilingual Dictionary of Criminal Justice Terms (English/Spanish) (1991)
(Libraries Worldwide: 271)
• l P. H. Collin, Spanish Law Dictionary: Spanish/English, English/Spanish = Diccionario de
Términos JurÃdicos: Español-Inglés, Inglés-Español (1999) (Libraries Worldwide: 255)
• l Steven M. Kaplan & Antonio Escudero Viera, Wiley’s English-Spanish and Spanish-English
Legal Dictionary = Diccionario JurÃdico Inglés-Español y Español-Inglés Wiley (1993)
(Libraries Worldwide: 244)
• l Henry S. Dahl & Tamera Boudreau, McGraw-Hill’s Spanish and English Legal Dictionary:
Dahl’s Abridged Law Dictionary = Diccionario JurÃdico Inglés-Español: Diccionario
JurÃdico Abreviado Dahl (2004) (Libraries Worldwide: 206)
• l Henry S. Dahl, Dahl’s Law Dictionary: Spanish-English/ English-Spanish: An Annotated
Legal Dictionary, Including Authoritative Definitions from Codes, Case Law, Statutes,
and Legal Writing and Legal Opinions of Attorneys General = Diccionario JurÃdico Dahl
(3d ed. 1999) (Libraries Worldwide: 203)
• l Steven M. Kaplan & Fernando Pombo, Wiley’s English-Spanish, Spanish-English Legal
Dictionary = Diccionario JurÃdico Inglés-Español, Español-Inglés Wiley (2d ed. 1997)
(Libraries Worldwide: 194)
• l Arturo L. Torres & Francisco Avalos, Latin American Legal Abbreviations: A
Comprehensive Spanish/Portuguese Dictionary with English Translations (1989) (Libraries
Worldwide: 183)
Current interest in these items is
easily explained: even the most cursory glance at business or legal news headlines
demonstrates the increasing internationalization of financial transactions, as well
as the practice of law that stewards these transactions. As international transactions
and communications become more commonplace for businesses and for the practice
of law, the interest in legal reference sources that address these concerns also
increases.
As one example of this point, Dean Daniel Rodriguez of the University of San Diego School of Law
writes in his preface to Vargas’s Mexican Legal Dictionary and Desk Reference that:
[The development and improvement of] practical legal and business relationships among
individuals in both [the United States and Mexico] requires common understanding, though
not necessarily a common language, so that business and legal transactions can be completed
efficiently and fairly. The growing economic interdependence of both countries makes the
development and maintenance of this common understanding absolutely critical.
Daniel B. Rodriguez, Preface, in Jorge A. Vargas, Mexican Legal Dictionary and Desk
Reference vii (2003). Other scholars have noted that although “publishing houses are offering numerous
bilingual legal dictionaries to translators and lawyers . . . the quality of most of these dictionaries is
poor to extremely bad. Only a few dictionaries are of good quality.” Gerard-René de Groot & Conrad
J.P. van Laer, The Dubious Quality of Legal Dictionaries, 34 Int’l J. Legal Info. 65, 65 (2006)
3 Law schools are adjusting curricula to respond to this interest: for example,
the “Week One” program at Georgetown University Law Center immerses firstyear
students in hypothetical disputes that cross national boundaries.4 Current
interest in foreign and international law is spurred by necessity. After Justice
Stephen Breyer famously listed several recent Supreme Court cases involving
international issues in front of a meeting of the American Bar Association, he was
recorded as saying that deciding such cases requires
lawyers and judges who have some familiarity or ability to reach out and find out about
certain areas of foreign law. We can’t do that in the Supreme Court unless the lawyers
know enough about us to point the way. And the lawyers can’t point the way unless the law
professors teach the students that [foreign and international law] is something they ought
to look at.5
¶4 As legal curricula adapt to changing practice needs, law schools and law
libraries should also change their reading lists and library collections accordingly.
This creates, in turn, additional tasks for librarians, especially those who make
decisions about collection development: how does the judicious librarian distinguish
among items as specialized as English-Spanish legal dictionaries? After all,
English-Spanish legal dictionaries often require relatively frequent replacement as
they are among the more common items to “go missing.” 6 And budget realities,
especially among publicly funded institutions, often prevent law libraries from
acquiring all titles within a particular subject area. Such realities present a particular
complication in the development of any collection of highly specialized items.
¶5 Bilingual legal dictionaries play a fundamental role in developing a collection
of foreign, comparative, and international law (FCIL). (Bilingual dictionaries in general allow the librarian access to “the language of the jurisdiction, and
more importantly, bi-lingual legal dictionaries . . . provide some access to the language of the law
of the jurisdiction.” Barbara H. Garavaglia, Collection Development Policies and Other Basic Tools
for Building a Foreign and International Law Collection, GlobaLex, Mar. 2007, https://www.nyulaw
global.org/globalex/International_Foreign_Collection_Development.htm.)
Yet even assessing the
value and quality of simple monolingual law dictionaries is a task beset with difficulties;
Mersky & Dunn’s legendary Fundamentals of Legal Research devotes
fewer than three full pages to the presentation of law dictionaries, and offers only
the most basic standards by which to assess the value of a law dictionary.
While de Groot and van Laer have written extensively on bilingual legal dictionaries, they consciously
excluded English-Spanish legal dictionaries after determining that Spanish was not one of
the “main EU-languages.” De Groot & van Laer, supra note 3, at 76. When measured against the corpus
of bilingual legal dictionaries, those scholars found that Spanish was a “target language for only
four other legal EU-languages.”
Source and Target Language
Zgusta, supra note 12, at 294 (“The basic purpose of a bilingual dictionary is to coordinate with
the lexical units of one language those lexical units of another language which are equivalent in their
lexical meaning. The first language, to whose lexical units the lexical units of the other language are
co-ordinated is called the source-language; the order of the entries in a bilingual dictionary is given
by the source language. The other language whose lexical units are coordinated to the first ones, is
called the target language.” ).
With respect to most English-Spanish
legal dictionaries published in the United States, the source language is generally
North American English, and the target language is usually Latin American
Spanish.
Richard S. Harrell, Some Notes on Bilingual Lexicography, in Problems in Lexicography, supra note
29, at 51, 51. Harrell implies that the content of a bilingual dictionary must be driven by the needs of
the target-language speakers, and not by the needs of source-language speakers. Therefore, EnglishSpanish
legal dictionaries that provide access to English-language jurisprudence must be driven by
the needs of Spanish-language speakers, and English-Spanish legal dictionaries that provide access to
Spanish-language jurisprudence must be driven by the needs of English-language speakers. See id. at
51-52.
Polysemy
The Oxford English Dictionary defines
“polysemy” as “[t]he fact of having several meanings; the possession of multiple
meanings.” Heikki E.S. Mattila, Comparative Legal Linguistics 262-64 (Christopher Goddard
trans., 2006). Mattila categorizes “Translations Misleading Due to Polysemy” as one of the three
dangers under the umbrella of “Misleading Literal Translations.” Id. at 262-63. Mattila continues by
noting that
“Cases of polysemy are particularly difficult. This involves cases where an identical concept
stands behind terms similar in two or more languages in certain contexts of usage but two or
several divergent concepts in certain other contexts. Correct translation presupposes careful
analysis of the contexts where the terms are used.
One example that well illustrates this problem is the term jurisprudence. In England and the
United States, the original meaning of the term jurisprudentia, as used by the Ancient Romans,
has grosso modo remained as such. In legal English, jurisprudence most often refers to legal
theory. In France, by contrast, the meaning of the term began to change from the 17th century.
In modern legal French, it refers to the body of court decisions and to the law established on
the basis of those decisions. In the other Romance languages, the main meaning of the national
variants of the term (giurisprudenza / jurisprudencia / jurisprudência) is the same as in France;
however, they are occasionally used in the sense of ‘legal science’. On the other hand, the meaning
of ‘body of judicial decisions’ is also known in the legal language of the United States and in
English texts on public international law. In sum, it can be said that the semantic emphasis of the
term jurisprudence is differently placed in the Latin countries and the common law countries. In
this first group, it normally refers to court decisions, while in the second it refers to legal science
(theory). However, in both cases there are important exceptions to this rule that the translator
should be aware of.
An analogous example, as to partial differences of meaning of legal English and French
terms, is jurisdictio. The English term jurisdiction covers a semantic field distinctly wider than
the French term juridiction.”
the more authoritative the support for a definition or entry, the more
authoritative that dictionary will be. As such, makers of bilingual legal dictionaries
should present supporting material from the most authoritative sources possible,
such as code provisions, judge-made common law, or other official sources of law
and doctrine.
Contents
Many monolingual unabridged dictionaries often include a wealth of reference material
outside of the dictionary proper, including, but not limited to, language usage guides, gazetteers, information
about government officials and documents, calendars, and a broad variety of similar resources.
Even Black’s Law Dictionary includes such appendices as a “Table of Legal Abbreviations,” a collection
of legal maxims from Latin, the U.S. Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a
“Time Chart of the United States Supreme Court,” a map of the Federal Circuits, and a chart of British
Regnal Years dating from the Norman Conquest. See Black’s Law Dictionary 1653-1795 (8th ed.
2004).
as scholars have noted, inter-jurisdictional
legal practice requires that “information on rules from one legal system has
to be provided in the legal language of another legal system.” (de Groot & van Laer, supra note 3, at 65) Since the task of
legal translation is not merely to provide access between different languages, but
also between communities of practice among different languages, the individual
using a reference to bridge these differences may be best served with dictionary
entries that include more, rather than less, information.
scholars looking for information about legal language
are hopefully accustomed to relying upon secondary reference material within a
dictionary, such as pronunciation or etymological guides, as well as material that
explains and presents certain specific contexts of language use. Sadly, the majority
of English-Spanish legal dictionaries annotated herein offer no such material, as
many lack citations to judicial decisions, which can be of great use to individuals
looking for definitions or reference sources in a dictionary. It may be that the most
effective bilingual legal dictionaries are also those that combine judicial definitions
with original scholarship.
¶25 Sidney Landau, a noted authority on dictionaries, approvingly adopts Mary
Haas’s “desiderata for a bilingual dictionary,” by suggesting that better bilingual
dictionaries will be marked by the features below:
1. It provides a translation for each word in the source language.
2. Its coverage of the source language lexicon is complete.
3. Grammatical, syntactic, and semantic information is provided.
4. Usage guidance is given.
5. Names are included.
6. It includes special vocabulary items, such as scientific terms.
7. Spelling aids and alternative spellings are indicated.
8. Pronunciation is included.
9. It is compact in size-which obviously limits its coverage of items 1-8″.
Almost no legal dictionary offers pronunciation
guides, entries on names, or usage guidance (…) It is also worth noting that both earlier and current iterations of Black’s have included (albeit sporadically) both pronunciation guides as well as
nominal usage guidance to distinguish parts of speech or historical items. Compare Black’s Law Dictionary at xix-xx, and inside front cover (8th ed. 2004), with Black’s
Law Dictionary at vii-xiv, and inside front cover (6th ed. 1991).
¶27 Furthermore, few contemporary English-Spanish legal dictionaries feature
many of the remaining items from Haas’s list. In addition to a lack of guidance on
pronunciation, usage, or names, entries in English-Spanish legal dictionaries tend
to offer little guidance, if any, on matters of grammar, syntax, or semantics.
Spelling variants may or may not be included, depending upon an incalculable host
of variables. Perhaps the only items that commonly used English-Spanish legal
dictionaries present from Haas’s indicators of quality bilingual dictionaries are the
following: they tend to be compact, and they offer translations of each word in the
source language that the dictionary makers choose to define.
¶28 Writing almost twenty years after Haas, Steiner evaluates bilingual dictionaries
pragmatically, from the perspective of the person consulting the dictionary.
He suggests the following “inventory of fifteen ways in which the lexicographer”
serves the reader by helping the reader “choose the needed word by means of convenient,
clear, and appropriate clues”
(Roger J. Steiner, How a Bilingual Dictionary Best Serves the Writer, 1977 Papers Dictionary Soc’y
N. Am. 24, 24):
1. Using the two sides of the dictionary to discriminate each other.
2. A word list which is as complete as possible: the affording of run-ons.
3. Illustrative sentences or phrases.
4. The part-of-speech label.
5. Pronunciation.
6. Etymology.
7. Punctuation.
8. Typography.
9. Fixed order.
10. Special signs and symbols.
11. Subject and usage labels
12. Latin biological and botanical names.
13. Explanation of the use of a word or expression.
14. The context word or phrase.
15. A truncated form of the definition.45
To be sure, an item such as “Latin biological and botanical names” is clearly inapposite
to a dictionary of law. However, like Haas before him, Steiner also emphasizes
the need to offer access to the traditional fundamentals of a dictionary entry,
such as parts of speech, pronunciation, etymology, and the like. As noted above,
few of the bilingual legal dictionaries (…) offer such data, and this lack may indicate deeper structural issues within the current ad hoc approach to creating
and assessing bilingual legal dictionaries.
¶29 More to the point, as Steiner’s list progresses, it moves from more complex
elements to simpler elements. The first two items, in particular, are not necessarily
apparent upon first read. The practice of using both sides of a bilingual dictionary
to discern and, in Steiner’s words, discriminate a source language meaning from
the target language meaning becomes extraordinarily complicated when the reader
of the bilingual legal dictionary stops to contemplate the significant distinctions in
practice among jurisdictions. However, as a brief examination of some of the less
satisfactory dictionaries annotated below reveals, few bilingual legal dictionaries
contain explanations for using the term defined, and even fewer contain entries
including some modest presentation of that term’s context of use. Some of the least
satisfactory dictionaries, in fact, offer little more than the truncated form of a definition
for the term in question. This suggests that the provision of equivalency
lists, which stand in for bilingual legal dictionaries, requires less time and effort
than creating more comprehensive bilingual legal dictionaries. The implications
are clear: as market demand for these items increases, their quality is likely to
decrease, unless we bring more critical attention to them.
Evaluating Bilingual Legal Dictionaries
¶30 As noted above, the criticism of bilingual legal dictionaries is somewhat thin.
To be sure, de Groot is among the foremost scholars noting that “[t]ranslators of
legal terminology are obliged to practise comparative law” ; as such, his scholarship
offers “desiderata for reliable legal dictionaries . . . .”
de Groot & van Laer, supra note 3, at 66, 72-73. de Groot and van Laer evaluate bilingual legal
dictionaries considering the following:
1. Bilingual legal dictionaries should be restricted to offering suggestions for translations based
on legal areas, tying both source language terms and target language terms to a particular
legal system. If this is not adhered to, the make-up of the dictionary becomes unclear and
precludes easy and reliable consultation.
2. The relation of the entries and their proposed translations to their respective legal system
must be made explicit by offering references to relevant legal sources, linguistic context, and
sometimes encyclopædic and bibliographic references, thus ensuring verifiability.
3. Compilers of bilingual dictionaries should not present their proposed translations as “standard”
equivalents. Alternatives should be identified according to area of law, system and
use.
4. The dictionary should indicate the degree of equivalence: whether the translation suggestion
is a full equivalent, the closest approximate equivalent (acceptable equivalent) or a partial
equivalent.
5. The absence of an equivalent term in the legal system(s) related to the target language should
be mentioned expressly. In that case, subsidiary solutions should be offered.
6. Neologisms must be identified as such, so as to avoid these being used by those consulting
the dictionary as terms belonging to the legal system related to the target language. Ideally,
the suggestion for a particular neologism should be reasoned.
7. The proposed translations must be reconsidered in the event of changes in either the legal
system related to the source language or that related to the target language. In other words:
legal dictionaries must be frequently reassessed and updated.
Id. at 73 (emphasis added). It is worth noting that de Groot and van Laer follow their list with this
assessment: “The compilation of a bilingual legal dictionary that makes a serious effort to comply
with these desiderata is a great accomplishment, which deserves the qualification of academic work.
Regrettably, very few legal dictionaries published so far have attempted to meet these requirements.”
Id
However, while many of the elements in previously cited rubrics are inapposite to bilingual legal dictionaries,
those offered by de Groot are comprehensive to the point of being unwieldy.
This paper, in contrast, offers evaluative criteria that privilege concision and relevance
over comprehensiveness and erudition. In other words, we should evaluate
bilingual legal dictionaries only upon the criteria that matter to those who consult
these dictionaries. Readers consult bilingual legal dictionaries because they need
useful data about comparative legal systems and differing legal languages that are
presented authoritatively in a manner that emphasizes the verifiability of such data.
Readers need bilingual legal dictionaries to provide information that can be used
to bridge legal systems and languages, information that carries authority across
these systems and languages, and information that is presented in a manner facilitating
the verification of supporting authority. I use the terms “utility,” “authority,”
and “provenance,” respectively, to refer below to: (1) how useful the entries in a
dictionary are, and in turn, how useful the dictionary as a whole may be; (2) how
persuasive any supporting authority that entries in that dictionary use may be; and
(3) how easily one may trace and assess the source of supporting authority from a
given entry into the jurisprudence of the target language’s jurisdiction.
Utility
¶31 As a threshold matter, a reference work should meet a fundamental test of utility.
In less formal terms, the “best legal reference books have a good beat and are easy
to dance to; that is, their organization and usefulness are immediately apparent.” (Linda Karr O’Connor, Best Legal Reference Books of 1996, 89 Law Libr. J. 265, 265 (1997)).
Obviously, bilingual legal dictionaries must demonstrate their use by providing
target-language access to the meanings of source-language legal terms.
Bilingual legal dictionaries must serve the following uses, inter alia: facilitating
comprehension between languages and jurisdictions, providing target-language
access to source-language terms of legal art and practice, and demonstrating similarities
and distinctions between source-language terms and their target-language
translations.
In short, the concept of utility may be best understood as being composed
of two related concepts: authority of the work overall, and verifiability, or the ability
to trace the provenance of the information contained within each entry.
Authority
¶37 Given the quality issues in current bilingual legal dictionaries, scrupulous compilers
of these items will not frame the question of authority as a choice between
“the formalities of defining words” and the formalities of legal meaning, as Garner
has. Rather, they will focus upon both legal and lexical accuracy as values that their
products add to the purchaser’s research and practice. Again, my use of the term
‘authority’ here reflects a global assessment of a bilingual legal dictionary, and is
distinguished from the concept of ‘provenance,’ which I characterize as an aspect
that specifically indicates the verifiability of information contained within discrete
entries in a dictionary.
¶38 As an example, Henry Dahl’s work demonstrates authority. Entries in his
dictionaries are not merely bolstered with citations to statutes, cases, or regulations
where appropriate; rather, his entries make clear the doctrinal and jurisdictional
distinctions extant among Spanish-speaking nations. As demonstration of this
authority, consider his treatment of the topic of forum non conveniens, a term that,
due to its Latinate roots, is at least moderately understandable to the Americantrained
lawyer, irrespective of linguistic, cultural, and professional distinctions
between North American and Latin American legal practice. Other English-Spanish
legal dictionaries, including the Vargas item discussed above, apparently rely upon
this familiarity and do not treat this topic as meriting an entry. Dahl, however,
includes ten distinct and separate entries on the topic, indicating that at least nine
Spanish-speaking jurisdictions differ with respect to their interpretations of this
long-standing judicial doctrine.
¶39 Not only does Dahl present forum non conveniens from the perspectives of
Costa Rica, Dominica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, the Philippine Islands,
Nicaragua, and Panama, he also presents interpretations and explications of this
concept from PARLATINO (the transnational Latin American Parliament) as well
as a general treatment of this concept throughout Latin America.( Henry Saint Dahl, McGraw-Hill’s Spanish and English Legal Dictionary: Dahl’s Abridged
Law Dictionary 115-33 (2004). The fourth edition of Dahl’s Law Dictionary offers a similarly comprehensive
treatment of forum non conveniens. See Henry Saint Dahl, Dahl’s Law Dictionary:
Diccionario JurÃdico Dahl: Spanish-English / Inglés-Español 224-48 (4th ed. 2006). Both items
are annotated infra). These entries
include voluminous text from and citations to documents that embody the characterizations
of forum non conveniens in his dictionary’s entries. Such an exhaustive
treatment of a critical but, as Dahl notes, an “unknown institution in Latin America” serves as but one demonstration of his dictionary’s comprehensive
authority.
¶40 In general, an authoritative English-Spanish legal dictionary will either
encompass this approach by presenting doctrinal distinctions among the jurisdictions
relevant to its lexicon, or it will limit the jurisdictions relevant to its lexicon,
as Vargas chose to do with his Mexican Legal Dictionary. Few English-Spanish
legal dictionaries demonstrate much by way of authority without relying upon one
of the strategies outlined immediately above.
Provenance
¶41 The concept of verifiability, or “provenance,” as applied to information tools,
may be a function that reflects a reader’s “information literacy” ; indeed, if information
literacy is a sociotechnical practice relying upon “texts . . . [which] feature
in the practical accomplishment of social actions and social activities,” (Kimmo Tuominen et al., Information Literacy as a Sociotechnical Practice, 75 Libr. Q. 329, 341 (2005)) then
dictionaries (and the provenance of the entries contained within them) present a
fundamental tool for researchers or practitioners to rely upon in their research. In
other words, dictionaries in general (and bilingual legal dictionaries, in particular)
present patrons with threshold opportunities in information literacy, and the provenance
of entries will determine how substantive material from a given dictionary
affects that patron’s understanding of information and research.
¶42 Issues emerging from the origin of certain words or phrases have traditionally
been ignored by the lexicographers who have created bilingual legal dictionaries,
despite a consistent emphasis upon these elements by lexicographers who have
studied and articulated “best practices” for the creation and compilation of bilingual
dictionaries. But rather than call into question the utility of etymology within
legal dictionaries, this oversight implies that bilingual legal dictionary makers have
been less than diligent in providing helpful data about particular words or
phrases. As Avalos has noted, law and language are both culturally bound. See Avalos, supra note 14 (“[A]s
language and law develops [sic] in a society . . . they both tend to become more and more unique to
their particular society. This is due in large part to the fact that a society builds its language and law
upon foundations derived from their unique culture and history.” ). As such, data on the origins of a
linguistic or legal term would logically reveal some information about the source of the term, and
perhaps offer scholars of comparative law access to another medium for comparison of legal systems
and doctrines.
¶43 In stark contrast to Dahl’s treatment of forum non conveniens noted above,
Julio Romañach’s English-Spanish Legal Dictionary offers the following: “Tribunal
inconveniente. Doctrina que permite a un juez competente rehusar el conocimiento
de una causa cuando el lugar del foro es inconveniente a las partes o los testigos.” (Julio Romañach, Jr., Dictionary of Legal Terms 170 (2005). This item, along with Romañach’s
earlier version, is annotated infra. My translation of this entry cited above reads as: “Inconvenient tribunal. [A] doctrine that allows a competent judge to refuse judicial attention to a cause of action
when the forum is inconvenient to the parties or the witnesses.” Interestingly enough, this item does
not offer a companion entry providing English-language access to the term forum non conveniens).
This definition does not provide the reader with any indication that the doctrine of
forum non conveniens is problematic, if not outright contrary to doctrine, among
Latin American jurisdictions, nor does it allow the reader to understand the various
jurisdictional distinctions with respect to forum non conveniens among the nations
of Latin America. As such, the Romañach entry appears to be of dubious provenance.
Unlike Dahl, Romañach provides no citations to sources that can bolster,
support, or explain the meaning his dictionary provides; all of which renders this
definition less than adequate.
Evaluating English-Spanish Legal Dictionaries
Landau cautions that “[m]any bilingual lexicographers have observed that
it is next to impossible to construct a unidirectional bilingual dictionary for speakers
of both languages” targeted by the dictionary in question.59 This succinct judgment
may also apply to bilingual legal dictionaries, for law, like language, is
bound, if not determined, by culture. (For Avalos “Language and the law are very closely related and are generated through
social practices. Language is the essence of the law. The Law is substantially formulated through
language. They are formalized communication systems because they both are governed by their own
rules of creation and reproduction. There is non-language law, but it is minor and requires little translation.
The non-language law I am talking about are things such as traffic signs, sirens, policemen hand
directions and other such things.” ).
Dahl’s dictionaries, while lacking the appendices that Romañach and
Vargas include, offer specific citations to authority. Dahl also acknowledges distinctions
among Latin American jurisdictions, a problem that Vargas avoids by
concentrating on one jurisdiction, and a problem that Romañach appears to have
ignored altogether. However, while Dahl provides access to language, he does not
provide the access to doctrine and equivalent legal concepts that Vargas provides.
¶49 Like the Vargas dictionary, the Torres and Avalos item draws its strength
from its focus.64 By concentrating on providing access to abbreviations that obtain
in Latin American jurisprudence, these authors have created a work of circumscribed
use, but invaluable utility. This author knows of no other dictionary that
provides access to legal abbreviations relevant to Latin American law and practice.
Appropriately enough, this is one of the more frequently collected items among
the English-Spanish legal dictionaries annotated below.
¶50 Other items treated below, sadly, merit little consideration as dictionaries
in and of themselves. While some offer marginally useful access to fundamental
concepts or terms within the target system, their utility as a reference is suspect.
Others could be considered useful as a reference, but only if one suspends disbelief
with respect to the authoritative characteristics of the volume. Examples from Dahl
and Vargas notwithstanding, the current state of English-Spanish legal dictionaries
is rather grim
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