Phraseological units in English-Spanish legal dictionaries: a comparative study

Abstract

A bilingual general language or specialized dictionary that addresses translation needs should include phraseological information. However, there is still no consensus as to the type of
combinatorial information that should be included, where it should be placed, or how it should be classified. Not surprisingly, there are almost as many approaches to phraseology and phraseological units as authors or types of study. In this paper, some of the most representative legal English-Spanish dictionaries are described in order to evaluate their potential usefulness for translators who need to produce a target language text. The comparison of these dictionaries is based on the headword vista [‘trial’, ‘hearing’]. Our results concluded that a legal dictionary for translators should provide various ways of accessing phraseological units as well as a classification of phraseological information within each entry for a more effective retrieval of information. Finally, the dictionary should include a short description of the unit so that users are better able to understand its meaning and usage in different contexts as well as its potential contextualized correspondences in the target language and culture.