Abstract
Legal electoral terminology is a specialist subject within the broader legal language discourse. When translating into Arabic, even basic electoral terms can be translated differently in different Arab countries for various reasons due to different sources of inspiration. Most legal electoral terms have a variety of alternative equivalents within the relevant linguistic field or semi-legal domain. This paper discusses such alternatives while presenting problems related to the existing resources in the field. Data collected from the 2012 election of members of the Libyan General National Congress are analysed to test the consistency in selecting from these alternatives. Furthermore, material presented in various recently compiled dictionaries, glossaries and manuals of electoral terms are used as examples. The hypothesis drawn from working on a large body of material translated from English into Arabic is that the consistency in selecting equivalents for electoral legal terms is only partial. Consistency is more apparent when terms are law proper but not otherwise. Also, material from different sources indicates problems concerning standardisation, abbreviations and acronyms as well as cultural and linguistic problems.