Category Archives: International Law

by monzo

Language rights and linguistic justice in international law: Lost in translation?

Dr. Jacqueline Mowbray

While there is no single ‘right to language’ in international law, a range of international legal provisions protect languages and their speakers. These includeminority rights, which protect the rights of minorities to ‘use their own language’; non-discrimination rights; rights to freedom of expression; rights to culture; and other rights, such as the right to a fair trial, which can be used incidentally to protect language interests in certain situations. This paper considers the extent to which these rights are capable of delivering linguistic justice, and the assumptions embedded in international law as to the role of translation and interpretation in that process. Drawing on insights from other disciplines, including particularly sociolinguistics and translation studies, I argue that the conceptualisation of both ‘linguistic justice’ and ‘translation’ within international law is deficient in certain key respects. In particular, in focusing on translation as a primary means of protecting language rights and addressing injustices associated with language use, international law conceals injustices which can result from the process of translation itself. As a result, the promise of language rights fails to translate into linguistic justice.

by monzo

The translation of international law: the lexical and legal implications of the translator’s choices

Maria Meladaki

In most cases, international law conventions are drafted in one (or more) official languages, and then are translated to the official language of the state that has ratified the convention. The translated texts of international law conventions reflect the legal consequences that the states shall respect by ratifying an international legal instrument.
The present paper compares the translations, from English into Greek, of the Council of Europe convention entitled “Convention of the Protection of Human Rights and Dignity of the Human being with regard to the Application of Biology and Medicine: Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine” (Oviedo Convention). One translation served for the integration of the convention into Greece’s legal order and the other served for the integration of the convention into Cyprus’s legal order.
The paper analyses the translation choices made in each of the above-mentioned translations, taking into consideration the already formed structural and terminological differences in the legal discourse of the two states. In addition, the paper indicates how terminological choices during the translation process of such documents could have a strong impact on future internal legislation on the same matter. Moreover, the paper analyses translation choices that could lead to a different meaning and therefore, to different legal consequences than the ones intended when drafting the original text. The legal translator of international law should be properly trained, in a multidisciplinary level, and given access to all crucial resources to form into the translated text the true meaning of each convention, so that all beneficiaries from it, in a global level, can have access to the international protection it entails.

Keywords: legal translation, international law, legal order, bioethics, accessibility.