Una de las herramientas más útiles en la tarea del traductor es el conocimiento del género por parte de éste. Si partimos de una base sólida a la hora de traducir, nuestro trabajo resultara más sencillo y su calidad final será sin duda mayor.
En el presente artículo es mi intención destacar la importancia del concepto de género en la traducción jurídica abundando en sus principales rasgos, tipología y función.
El objetivo último es ampliar la concepción de lo que constituye un género jurídico mediante una breve clasificación de los géneros jurídicos de ficción, completando de algún modo las clasificaciones actuales sobre el tema y atendiendo a las necesidades traductológicas modernas.

A deep knowledge of the text genre is one of the most useful tools for the translator. In the field of translation, all tasks will be simplified and quality will improve greatly through detailed knowledge of the genre.
The aim of this paper is to highlight the relevance of this concept within the field of legal translation by describing its main features and commenting on some of the current classifications of legal genres.
Genres belonging to the area of fiction are often not considered legal genres per se, although legal terminology is an essential part of them and our lives are laden with these documents, whether written or oral. Therefore, they are excluded from virtually all classifications, which usually account for texts such as law reports, contracts, insurance policies, statutes, certificates, trial examinations, thesises, essays and the like.
The final goal here is to broaden the current concept of legal genre by means of a short classification of genres belonging to the area of fiction, the audio-visual arts and journalism (novels known as ‘courtroom thrillers’, plays, TV series, videogames, documentaries, etc.), thus completing somehow the existing classifications on the matter and fulfilling the real needs of modern translators.

legal, genres, fiction, courtroom thriller.