English-Chinese Legal Dictionary

Author: Compilation Team of "English-Chinese Legal Dictionary"
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2005-01-01
Features: Guided by the principle of enrichment and improvement, integrating professionalism, scientificity, practicality, and modernity, this revision strives for accuracy in word selection and rational arrangement, highlighting its practical value. After modification, deletion, and supplementation, the main text has approximately 15,000 additional entries. Additionally, over 1,000 new abbreviations have been added to the appendices, while the original Chinese-English section has been removed. This dictionary is the most comprehensive medium-sized professional dictionary in China to include legal terms from the common law system, civil law system, and Chinese law. It covers English terms in various legal disciplines such as legal theory, legal history, constitutional law, administrative law, civil law, civil procedure law, criminal law, criminal procedure law, economic law, public international law, private international law, and international economic law, totaling over 40,000 entries. There are also nearly 3,000 common abbreviations and organizational charts of court systems in major Western countries as appendices. It was compiled and published under the guidance of the Party's policy of opening up to the outside world, promoting economic development domestically, and strengthening the legal system, to meet the urgent needs of legal workers, economic workers, foreign affairs workers, and faculty and students from relevant universities in reading and translating English legal publications.
Since the laws and systems of different countries are produced and developed under specific economic foundations and other conditions, some legal terms have their own specific interpretations. Moreover, due to the lack of standardized translation norms in China's translation industry for a long time, a single term often has multiple translations, which inevitably leads to confusion in understanding the laws of Western countries in terms of meaning or even theory. To gradually achieve standardized translations, this dictionary not only provides necessary brief explanations as much as possible but also adopts a principle of inclusiveness in translation, incorporating common translations in China (including those from Taiwan and Hong Kong publications). Some terms also propose our preferred translations. For example, the words "Chairman" and "President" are generally translated as "" and "," respectively. However, "Chairman" originally refers to the chief position in collective institutions such as meetings or committees, while "President" refers to a single position. Therefore, in addition to retaining their general translations, "Chairman" is translated as "() committee chair" and "President" as "(Chairman of the People's Republic of China)" when applicable to China's legal system.
Another example is "adhesion contract," for which there are five to six existing translations in China. Based on the principle of balancing the original term's meaning and legal interpretation, we prefer the translation "" (a contract where one party's contractual rights are limited and must conform to the other party's expression of intent), adding explanations such as "(also translated as or )" in parentheses.
Standardizing legal translations is not an easy task and is not determined by translators or publishers alone. We hope that through the practice of reading and translating by readers and translators, a consensus will gradually be reached. Additionally, although we adopt multiple translations for many terms, it remains challenging to translate them completely accurately. Users of this dictionary should pay attention to the different interpretations of the same legal term in various countries and periods and make appropriate choices or adjustments in translation.
This dictionary was compiled collectively under the strong support of institutions such as Southwest University of Political Science and Law, Sun Yat-sen University Law Department, Guangzhou Institute of Foreign Languages, and Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. The contributors include Zhang Zhongjiong, Xia Dengjun, Zhu Jiancheng, He Liansheng, Yang Shihong, Xia Douyin, and Wen Guangjun. Li Changdao and Xiao Mingsong provided some entries. Zeng Xiangrui and Song Haijun participated in the selection and compilation of Chinese-English entries. The review and finalization were handled by Xia Dengjun, He Liansheng, and Zhang Zhongjiong. An Ri Hua, the responsible editor of our publishing house, also contributed some entries, legal phrases, and proverbs, and participated in the overall review and finalization. We extend our sincere gratitude to the aforementioned institutions for their strong support.