1 MILLION TRANSLATED LEGAL TERMS FROM 100 JURISDICTIONS WORLDWIDE
– building a global system for translating legal terminology
The world needs a global system for conveying legal concepts between languages and across jurisdictions
The world needs a global system
for conveying legal concepts
between languages and across jurisdictions
TransLegal is partnering with dozens of leading universities around the world to bring quality, certainty, transparency and accountability to both human and machine translation in the legal domain, by connecting the world’s legal languages in a single, human-curated, multilingual and multi-jurisdictional database.
Our projects
News
Harvard Law School lectures on the WLD
(17 April 2024) TransLegal CEO and founder, Michael Lindner, and TransLegal's Chief Legal Officer, Michael Krallmann, held two lectures in March at Harvard Law School on the World Law Dictionary.
Deal signed for South Korea project
(21 August 2024) TransLegal has entered into an agreement with the Kyung Hee University Center for East-Asian Legal Studies to develop a South Korean-specific legal terminology dataset comprising 9,000 legal terms translated from English into Korean and an additional 1,000 uniquely South Korean legal terms translated into English. Professor Kwang
Successful meeting with SRM University in India
(26 August 2024) TransLegal Founder Michael Lindner and local TransLegal representative Ashwin Nair met with representatives from SRM University’s Faculty of Law, including Professor and Dean Dr Vijay Kumar Singh and Professor and Head of Law Dr Sandeep Kulshrestha, to discuss potential cooperation on development of a Hindi-English legal dictionary
Ethiopia meetings on World Law Dictionary
(15 May 2024) CEO and founder, Michael Lindner, and Chairman, David Kellermann, met on April 15 with lawyers from the Ethiopian Supreme Court, the Ministry of Justice, the Ethiopian Lawyers Association, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, and a professor from the University of Addis Ababa to discuss inclusion of Ethiopian
Swahili legal language conference hosted by TransLegal in Tanzania
(1 May 2024) TransLegal brought together legal scholars and professors from five East African countries on April 12th (Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi) for a conference co-hosted by the law faculty of the University of Dar es Salaam.
Mexico legal dictionary completed
(14 March 2024) TransLegal has completed development of a Spanish-English legal dictionary tailored to the jurisdiction of Mexico.
TransLegal to develop Arabic-English legal dictionary
(16 February 2024) TransLegal has signed an agreement with Saint Joseph University of Beirut to partner on the development of an English-Arabic legal dictionary specific to the jurisdiction of Lebanon.
TransLegal to develop Zimbabwean legal dictionary
(16 February 2024) TransLegal has signed an agreement with the University of Zimbabwe to partner on the development of an English-language legal dictionary specific to the jurisdiction of Zimbabwe.
TransLegal to develop Italian legal dictionary
(16 February 2024) TransLegal has signed an agreement with the University of Turin and the specialist legal translation agency LawLinguists to partner on the development of an Italian-language legal dictionary specific to the jurisdiction of Italy.
TransLegal engages team of editors for Nigeria legal dictionary
(5 February 2024) A team of five Nigerian lawyer-linguists has joined the World Law Dictionary project to develop an English-language legal dictionary specific to the jurisdiction of Nigeria.
Our university partners
University of Sherbrooke
Canada
University of Brasilia
Brazil
University of Innsbruck
Austria
University of Rosario
Colombia
University of St. Gallen
Switzerland
University of Szeged
Hungary
Bilkent University
Turkey
University of Turin
Italy
University of Minho
Portugal
Chuo University
Japan
Adam Mickiewicz University
Poland
ISIT
France
University of Ghana
Ghana
University of Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe
University of Göttingen
Germany
University of Dar es Salaam
Tanzania
Universidade Agostinho Neto
Angola
Connecting the world’s legal languages to solve four challenges:
Quality
Certainty
Transparency
Accountability
The problems
The legal domain presents unique translations challenges – particularly regarding accuracy and precision – which AI and machine translations are unable to overcome.
All translation providers make their own competing and potentially conflicting choices when translating legal terms, thereby tying people (knowingly or unknowingly) to a particular translation.
A fractured translation industry and opaque AI training data leave people with no means of checking how different terminology choices were arrived at and why.
End users have no way to discover who has made a terminology decision, and no opportunity to review or challenge it.
The solution
Expert-curated datasets containing accurate translations of legal concepts from one language and jurisdiction into another.
A single, recognized and widely used terminology resource which gives certainty to parties in international transactions.
A comprehensive, thoroughly documented, readily accessible database showing the basis for decisions and choices made when communicating legal concepts internationally.
A system which grants insight into who has made translation decisions and choices, as well as a robust review mechanism.
What we’re doing
A single database
We are connecting the world’s legal languages through English by creating bilingual dictionaries detailing and explaining legal concepts from numerous jurisdictions.
1 million legal terms
Our database covers a constantly expanding range of countries. We aim to launch projects for 100 countries by the end of 2024, producing 10,000 legal terms for each jurisdiction.
Expert language teams
We set up highly-qualified teams of academics, lawyer-linguists and legal practitioners to produce the world’s most sophisticated multi-jurisdictional legal terminology database.
Extensive comparative law notes
Our language teams employ functional equivalency analysis to produce unique notes explaining differences between legal concepts in different jurisdictions.
Definitions and audio files
We provide definitions of legal terms in clear and easy-to-understand English, written at an intermediate level and designed especially for non-native English speakers. Our resources also include over 10,000 audio files explaining how to pronounce English legal terms.
A single, multilingual database for the world’s legal terminology
Any global database of standard translations of legal terminology to and from English must be based on the following:
✓ Expert language teams composed of lawyer-linguists, academics and practitioners
✓ A jurisdictional approach whereby dictionaries reflect not only language differences, but also differences between legal systems (e.g. not just Portuguese-English, but also Brazil-Canada)
✓ Comparative law analysis, including of common law vs. civil law issues
✓ Coordination of terminology across jurisdictions
✓ Comparative law notes explaining paired legal terms that are not functionally equivalent
✓ A robust, user-friendly, single-source platform, easily accessible by browser and app
✓ A system for feedback and questions
✓ Broad endorsement by universities, bar and lawyers’ associations, and governments
✓ Coverage of at least 100 countries
✓ Coverage of least 10,000 legal terms per jurisdiction
Multiple applications
TransLegal’s multilingual, multijurisdictional dataset has a range of potential applications, including: – improving AI translation for the legal sector, – expanding the linguistic reach of legal tech software and developing AI-based comparative and analysis solutions for the legal sector.