International audience In States where cross-border litigation is increasing, translation is acquiring a major role in legal proceedings. Translation fulfils two main functions depending on whether it is aimed at the judicial authority or at a litigant who does not understand the language of the proceedings. When the target of the translation is a judicial authority, translation becomes an instrument for legal cooperation or an informational tool for the judge. When the translation is targeted to the litigant, it becomes a procedural safeguard. The issues raised by translation for both legal administrations and litigants merit greater consideration.Typically, court-appointed translators are expected to translate literally, since French jurisprudence considers literal translation a guarantee of accuracy. This raises several questions. Shouldn’t litigants have the right to a translation that guarantees legal certainty, which is necessary for a fair trial? Does literal translation guarantee this legal certainty? What should translators do when it is impossible to give a literal translation?As an auxiliary of justice, the translator is faced with a dilemma. If judicial requirements are to be respected, then neither translation methods, nor translation ethics can be neglected. When legal concepts do not match between two languages or two legal systems, does literal translation guarantee accuracy, as traditionally considered by judges, or does it compromise accuracy? The study of translation theory shows that the debate on literality is both recurrent, and as old as Antiquity. But translation takes factors other than literality and accuracy into account when assessing the quality of a translation. Rather than merely examining syntactical and linguistic structure, studying texts and discourses as a whole leads to a search for equivalencies in translation. This approach is particularly relevant to law translation. In this vein, comparative law can be useful in law translation because it can reveal terminological equivalencies for concepts that are difficult to translate between two legal systems. This will be demonstrated by comparing and translating the Spanish concepts of “recurso de reforma” and “recurso de reposición”.But the role of comparative law goes beyond a single practical application. By developing a new field, herein referred to as juritraductology, which would associate lawyers and linguists, greater legal certainty could be achieved in law translations in general, and specifically in legal proceedings.