Examining institutional translation through a legal lens

Abstract Studies of institutional translation have traditionally focused on European Union (EU) institutions and legislative genres. In order to develop a more comprehensive characterization at international organizations beyond EU supranational law, this study compares full mapping multilingual text production that two representative intergovernmental (IGOs), the United Nations (UN) World Trade Organization (WTO), over three years (2005, 2010, 2015) in common official languages (English, French, Spanish). The corpus-driven quantitative analysis categorization all texts from legal-functional perspective corroborate interconnection wide range textual genres perform, support, or derive central law-making, monitoring, adjudicative functions, fulfill other administrative purposes. findings also highlight interinstitutional variation reflects features each legal order, particular prominence hard law-making (with high proportion drafts input documents) as opposed larger volumes monitoring procedures UN WTO. This is considered instrumental further analyze specialized practices settings, ultimately inform translator training quality management.