The following investigation offers a comparative view of how two different languages/frameworks regulate and textualise legal provisions on international commercial arbitration. The increasing relevance of the extra-judicial alternative to courtroom disputes, especially between companies or corporations, makes arbitration an interesting example of how linguistic and cultural facets interact in specialised contexts within a given community of use. Italian and international UN legislation are assessed and compared from this perspective, in a topical area which has been largely neglected by applied linguistics.