Although U.S. researchers usually want translations of foreign legal materials into English, they are only occasionally available. Official documents of other countries are published in their official languages. Translations are unofficial, may not be reliable, and are rarely current. Machine translation is usually available and can be used for finding documents and getting a rough idea of their content, but they should not be relied on for more than that.
The first choice for the researcher is to find collections of legal materials already translated. Some translations of legal materials are available on foreign government sites, commercial databases, university websites, and foreign bar associations and law firms. Sites with translations may only offer summaries or abstracts, not full-text of laws or statutes translated by humans. If there is none available, the researcher may have to rely on translation of individual words and phrases to supplement partial knowledge of the language, or electronic or machine translation of websites and documents.
Generally speaking, constitutions of other countries are usually available translated into English, and are most likely to be available in the Hein World Constitutions Illustrated and Oxford Constitutions of the World subscription databases. Statutes are most likely to be available in translation as summaries, and for legislation of particular interest to researchers in other countries. The subject sources are also a good choice for finding translated statutes. English-language translation of court judgments are most often from courts of last resort, Supreme Courts or Constitutional Courts. They tend to be selected cases on major constitutional issues, and are more likely to be summaries than full-text of judgments.
Searching for primary documents will be easier and more accurate if the researcher already has citations or dates, allowing a search by numbers. Some sources for citations and dates may include links to the documents themselves. Many of the subject resources in the previous page of this guide have English-language summaries or abstracts, sometimes full-text.
To find citations and dates, try:
Guides and databases that list English translations:
Collections of translated laws for individual countries:
China
Finland
France
Germany
Israel
Japan
Republic of Korea
The Netherlands
Norway
Spain
Switzerland
Taiwan
United Arab Emirates
Vietnam
Latin America
If you are able to read some materials in a foreign language, you may just need to find specialized legal terms in English translation to read the document. Even if you plan to use an electronic translation resource like Google Translate when you find a document, you may need to translate individual legal terms to search in foreign legal databases or government websites. However, it is better to start with a date or citation (numerals) to search in databases in foreign languages.
Use caution when using electronic translation, since your results are not as accurate as those created by human translators, and machine translation sometimes has difficulty with technical legal terms. Legal terms may have different meanings in different countries or may have no equivalents in other languages. Limit your use to identifying documents and websites and getting a general understanding of the document.
