ICLTE: Legal Terminology

What the domain tests

Legal Terminology tests term selection, definition and equivalence at word and phrase level. ICLTE expects you to distinguish terms of art from ordinary words, recognise collocations, and explain why a target term is only partially equivalent. Accuracy includes knowing when to keep a source term and gloss it.

Core rules

• Define by genus and differentia: indemnity is a promise to compensate for loss, distinct from guarantee, a promise to answer for another's debt.
• Check word class and count: damages is a plural uncountable noun meaning monetary compensation; damage is loss or injury.
• Watch false friends: French dommages means damage, while dommages-intérêts is damages. French jurisprudence is case law; English jurisprudence is legal theory.
• Collocations are part of meaning: bring a claim, lodge an appeal, execute a contract (sign) versus perform a contract (obligations).
• Use a termbase with source, target, definition, source reference and status.

Worked example

Source: The buyer claimed damages for damage to the goods. Target: French. Reasoning: two distinct concepts share a root. Damages = dommages-intérêts; damage to the goods = dommages aux marchandises. A single rendering as dommages would lose the remedy and turn the claim into compensation for damage only. The sentence needs both terms and the prepositional phrase.

Traps

Using liability and responsibility interchangeably when one is legal exposure and the other may be a role. Translating guarantee as garantie without checking whether the target means a warranty, a security or a suretyship. Treating a dictionary's first equivalent as the answer. Do not invent a target acronym.