Developing a Czech–English online legal dictionary for court translators and legal professionals

Following rapid technological developments, the need has arisen for online legal dictionaries. Czech translators and legal professionals rely on a decades-old, printed Czech–English legal dictionary. Czech private law was fundamentally reformed in 2012 with the passing of the Civil Code, the Business Corporations Act, and the Private International Law Act, which has significantly changed civil law terminology compared to the 1964 Civil Code. However, this change has not been reflected in legal lexicography. Charles University offers a course for court translators, focusing on Czech law and English legal terminology. The participants and other persons facing the challenge of translating continental law concepts into the language of common law could significantly benefit from an online Czech–English dictionary that includes the terminology introduced by the 2012 reform and leverages the flexibility of the online medium as a way to improve the quality of court translation. This study reports findings based on an initiative undertaken at the Department of Foreign Languages at Charles University to launch a project for an online Czech–English legal dictionary. The project is underpinned by a needs analysis based on a survey among 73 participants in a court translators course.