The Department of Justice today launched a combined English-Chinese glossary of legal terms to promote the development of legal bilingualism in Hong Kong.

The combined glossary has more than 60,000 entries of legal terms which are commonly used in the city and sourced from Hong Kong legislation, judicial authorities and other legal publications.

It comprises six glossaries prepared by the Civil, Constitutional & Policy Affairs, International Law, Law Drafting and Prosecutions divisions as well as the Law Reform Commission Secretariat.

The department hopes that the combined glossary can facilitate legal translation work and promote the broader use of Chinese in the local legal field.

The existing English-Chinese glossary of legal terms on the Hong Kong e-Legislation database will run in parallel with the new combined glossary before being discontinued at a later stage.

The department is also compiling a combined Chinese-English glossary of legal terms, which is targeted to be published by the end of the year at the earliest.

Meanwhile, the Chinese-English glossary of legal terms is still available on the e-Legislation website.