Legal Research

Lexicons / Lexiques

By Simon Fodden

Earlier in the week e-discovery diva and twitterer Peg Duncan sent out a request for “an ‘official’ French translation for ‘redaction’…” (She’d come up with épuration, caviardage and expurgation thus far.) Then, as synchronicity will have it, shortly afterwards I came across the University of Ottawa’s CLTD (Centre for Legal Translation and Documentation) lexicons, which I believe we’ve not pointed to on Slaw before.

The Federal Lexicon / lexique fédéral presents you with a word list in either English or French, each word linked to a collection of uses (word plus context) drawn from federal legislation in the other language, giving you a law-idiomatic translation. There’s a comparable lexicon based in Ontario legislation.

Sadly for Peg — but perhaps not for our statute law — the word ‘redaction’ doesn’t appear in either lexicon (though ‘redacted’ is used many times in cases for which there’s a French translation).

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on July 08, 2009 (boomark / email).