Apesar de legal, em português, ser, de fato, uma das acepções de legal, em inglês, não é aquela a apresentar maior número de ocorrências, ou seja, a mais comum.

A partir do exame de exemplos autênticos em linguagem natural em inglês¹, nos quais o termo legal aparece em diversos sintagmas nominais, será possível observar que há três principais traduções para legal. A primeira e a mais comum é jurídico. A segunda, é legal. E, no terceiro caso, vermos que preservar o termo na tradução para o português implica um texto pouco idiomático, portanto, sugerimos que seja omitido e preservada sua colocação, i.e., a palavra que com legal forma o sintagma.

Entretanto, as possibilidades de tradução não se limitam a esses três casos, portanto, a partir do número 3 abaixo, apresentamos algumas outras que, certamente, também não esgotam o tema, mas aqui ficam registradas para justificar a escolha do termo como um dos mais elementares no estudo do inglês jurídico.

legal

1. legal

 definição legal - "[.] the judiciary or legislature adopts "the union of any two persons" as the legal definition of civil marriage."

 diploma legal, lei - "[.] significant changes have occurred without adequate preparation in most Latin American nations, where the legal instruments regulating water sectors have not been modified for decades."

 exigência legal - "[.] programs and projects only allow it when they need to comply with a legal requirement or when they have to implement the recommendations of international agencies."

2. jurídico

 assessor jurídico - "A senior legal adviser to the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, has quit the Foreign Office because [.]"

 norma jurídica - "Do moral norms operate in the sphere of the law? Does morality determine legal rules and practices?"

 princípio jurídico - "[.] management is usually fragmented and it is often subject to vague, arcane and/or contradictory legal principles [.]"

 sistema jurídico - "In so doing, the American legal system has put its highest moral imprimatur on a loathsome procedure [.]"

 teoria jurídica - "Nothing in Aquinas's legal theory or in the thought of modern natural law theorists, such as myself, [.]"

 terminologia jurídica - "[.] Israelis and Jordanians invented legal terminology to suit particularly local requirements in their 1994 peace treat [.]"

3. ___ (o termo legal é omitido na tradução para evitar casos de pleonasmo ou de pouca idiomaticidade em português)

 direito - "At Runneymede, England, on June 15, 1215, King John of England signed the Magna Carta in which he conceded a number of legal rights to his barons and to the people."

 contrato - "On 1 January 2004, the Tucumn Water Authority, in a legal agreement with the Tucumn water employees union, was designated a state corporation [.]"

 doutrina - "And to be fair, debates in the legal literature may filter into the public's conscience in such a way as to have [.]"

 jurista - "[.] the key players in the constitutional debates surrounding marriage (lawyers, judges, and legal scholars) had little specialized knowledge about marriage[.]"

4. lícito

 "[.]Rodham Clinton, for example, still claim they want abortion to be safe, legal, and rare [.]"

5. de advogado, advocatício

 honorários de advogado, honorários advocatícios - "Although legal costs are a regular expense of ours, the level of legal costs facing us as a result of the Actions is much larger than [.]"

6. do direito

 estudioso do direito

 ver 3.c

 "Kent, author of Kent's Commentaries, and one of the most influential American legal minds of all time, had a personal story that illustrates how foreign this impulse [.]"

 filósofo do direito - "Natural Law and Natural Rights, that revived interest in natural law among analytic legal philosophers in our time."

 fonte do direito - "[.] on distinctive techniques of legal analysis, such as how to identify and understand legal sources and how to work with statutes, precedents, [.]"

 história do direito - "In Anglo-American legal history, it happened when the state took over the role of the church [.]"

 sujeito de direito - "[.] function as consumers and sellers, and act in various ways as citizens, as legal subjects, and as participants in a global economy."

 profissional do direito

 "The annual report is widely read throughout the legal profession."

 "It allows a legal practitioner to act for both parties to a real property transaction."

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¹Todos os exemplos foram retirados do Corpus of Contemporary American English: disponível em https://www.americancorpus.org/