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.