TRANSLATING ‘CRIME’ AND ‘CRIMINAL’ IN COLLOCATIONS

Résumé

The words crime and criminal conjure up images of murders to most people working outside the legal system. This is far from being true because these two terms are used in reference to many violations of the law, not just crimes injuring persons, but also to stealing things, and numerous other serious offenses. When the former aspect is taken into account, i.e. crimes injuring persons, mention
can be made of such crimes as assault, mugging, murder and rape, whereas, in the case of stealing things, robbery, burglary, theft, shoplifting, fraud, carjacking are among the most frequent crimes referred to by the specialists in the field.