Legal translation can be divided into three main categories. These are the translation of documents relating to domestic or municipal law, supranational law (between domestic and international law) and international law. This paper compares and contrasts the translation of culturally specific or opaque terminology with the translation of acultural or transparent terms. In doing this, the paper examines the implications for the legal translator and for the status of the legal translation as a document capable of being used as a piece of evidence in its own right. Inevitably, some reference is also made to the discipline of comparative law since this field and the field of legal translation are, at times, interdisciplinary. Examples are given from supranational documents and from texts concerning the domestic law of France and Italy.