The purpose of the article is to show the applicability of selected Polish-English LSP dictionaries in legal translation work. The paper analyses how well labour-law terminology, found in the Polish Labour Code, is covered in Polish-English LSP dictionaries and compares them to equivalents selected by Agnieszka Jamroży, the author of an English translation of the Polish Labour Code. Based on a collation of the English equivalents present in the reviewed resources, the author presents some conclusions as to what the studied dictionaries lack and what terminographers should focus on when compiling a labour-law dictionary that would be more useful to translators and other users. Essentially, the article presents the Polish labour-law language system and labour-law corpus, legal terms and labour law in the context of LSP dictionaries. The methodology is then outlined, followed by the findings from the review of the selected dictionaries and an example translation of the Polish Labour Code. Certain labour-law terms particularly stood out, and these have been reviewed in detail in the paper: they are documentacja pracownicza, wymiar czasu pracy, norma czasu pracy and dobowy wymiar czasu pracy. The publication ends with conclusions and findings on the applicability of Polish-English LSP dictionaries in legal translation work and implications for creating a labour-law dictionary for translation purposes based on the research.

The paper discusses the terminology used in an EU document. It is part of a recently started research project on labour law terminology and terminography. Directive 2002/15/EC, the document selected for analysis, is an example of EU text dealing with two subject fields: labour law and road transport. Apart from that, it presents specialised vocabulary typical of EU documents. Analysing this directive enabled the author to compile a record of terms in the three fields: labour law, road transport law, and EU legislation, and then analyse them according to several classifications: the field of study, the type of concepts represented, and the length of terms (the number of words, a formal criterion). The proportions calculated made it possible to draw some conclusions as to the specialised vocabulary found in EU legal texts from the viewpoint of a translator and a terminologist, who need to be familiar with all the topics discussed in texts they are dealing with in a given job.

The paper discusses two approaches to compiling lists of labour-law basic terminology (BT): a frequency-based approach and a concept-based one. The purpose of the paper is to compare each of the methods based on two sets of basic terminology selected in accordance with them. Using the first method, terms are selected via an automatic search of keywords and terms and organised according to frequency with the use of Sketch Engine. The second means of term extraction is a concept-based approach in which terms are selected based on the table of contents of the Polish Labour Code, which, for the purposes of the study, is assumed to outline the terminological system of Polish labour law. The results of this research are reviewed from the viewpoint of terms’ frequency, the number of words they consist of, systemic relations between terms in the labour-law terminological system, and potential users and their needs. This has allowed the author to draw a few conclusions as to the characteristics of the approaches taken, and the applicability and usefulness of lists of BT compiled on their bases.