
Lost in Translation: Writing treaties in two languages can lead to problems - Thevet
https://www.historytoday.com/history-matters/lost-translation-treaties
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chki
A prominent example of this is the Treaty establishing the European Union
where every single one of the 20+ language versions is "Canon" and has to be
used by the European Court of Justice. There are often judgements with
paragraphs devoted to figuring out the hidden differences between certain
wordings in different languages. Interestingly this can lead to problems but
sometimes it also clears things up if one language is more precise than the
others.

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tom_mellior
Interesting, can you link to some examples? I've read a few ECJ judgements in
some high-profile cases, and I've never seen this.

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Corazoor
[https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...](https://eur-
lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:62003CJ0336&from=DE)

From case C-336/03 (easyCar), section 25: "That interpretation is expressly
supported by several language versions of Article 3(2) of the directive,
namely the German, Italian and Swedish versions, which mention, respectively,
‘Dienstleistungen in den Bereichen … Beförderung’ (‘services in the transport
sector’), ‘servizi relativi … ai trasporti’ (‘services relating to transport’)
and ‘tjänster som avser … transport’ (‘services which concern transport’). "

Instances of this are a bit hard to find, since they usually are just one
aspect of a larger argument, but they do happen.

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dmurray
This seems like a solved problem: agree at the time which translation takes
precedence in the event of a dispute. Use a third language (historically
French was the language of diplomacy, now English, but for modern treaties you
could pick any major world language) if, as is likely, neither side likes the
idea of the binding version being in the other side's language.

The same problem has to be solved in countries with more than one official
language. In Ireland, the Irish-language version of a law takes precedence.
This is a little awkward in theory since parliamentarians, civil servants,
judges and lawyers overwhelmingly do not speak Irish to a sufficient level to
draft, debate or interpret the law, and laws often exist for years before
anyone gets around to translating them and thereby creating the "definitive
version". But in practice, the legal system generally works.

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duxat_staglatz
Third party language implies that either citizens of country 1 must learn this
third party language to the proficiency needed to understand legalese; or to
both be expected to know, understand and apply the law but not be able to read
it.

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dmurray
Proficiency in another language is the minimum I expect of diplomats. It's not
like every citizen has to speak it.

~~~
duxat_staglatz
Which is my second point: citizens will have to follow and vote on the law of
their country, including international treaties, without understanding them
since they are not written in their language.

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pdpi
AIUI, a treaty is not law unto itself. Rather, the parties to a treaty will
pass laws that implement said treaty.

~~~
duxat_staglatz
This is not relevant for the political side of the question, e.g. it would not
be possible for a citizen on its own to judge whether the merits of a treaty.
Say, your senator campaigns on withdrawing from the Iran deal: how are you
supposed to assess this position if the deal was in third-party-language
Pashto?

In addition, I can present the case of France, where judges must disregard
laws that contradict treaties (the hierarchy of norms being Constitution >
Treaties > Laws > Executive orders). Therefore treaties, even with no national
law to implement them, have a direct effects on the law.

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afarrell
As a software engineer who cares deeply about testing, I sometimes find myself
wishing that there was a way to run a binding moot court on a law before it
got ratified.

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jfengel
As a software engineer, I laugh bitterly every time a lawyer tells me that
they are being rigorous in their interpretation of a law. Even when all the
lawyers agree on interpretation, their notion of "rigor" bears no resemblance
to the way a computer applies the term. A test engineer would have zero
problem fuzz-testing a law into nonexistence.

~~~
watwut
You should have seen developers rigorously implement requirements. Just
saying.

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jfengel
The way I see it, that's what a developer is: a tool for translating fuzzy
requirements into rigid definitions. Sometimes they're just plain lazy about
that task, but even when it's done well, they discover vagueness and
incompleteness in the specifications. They use their judgment to fill that in,
but they're often wrong, especially when they don't really know the domain.

Programmers want rigid requirements, because that makes their job easier.
Indeed, it does their real job for them. If we had a really rigid way of
writing specs, you'd just write a compiler for it. The real job of a
programmer is precisely about playing intermediary between the true rigor of
the computer and the pseudo-rigor of requirements.

~~~
watwut
I was hinting toward frustrating programmers, testers and manager, who don't
bother reading requirements (or think they know better) and proceed to code
and test against own imagination. Despite requirements being unambiguous about
this or that point.

~~~
jfengel
Oh, definitely agreed. We programmers do rather suck at our profession,
especially as I define our profession. Not all of us, and not all the time,
but we get rather feted for our technical sk1llz while failing to deliver the
thing we're actually supposed to be doing -- even just outright ignoring it.

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earthboundkid
In Japan, the constitution was originally written by the Americans before
being translated, and there are slight wording differences between the
Japanese and English.

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omgwtfbyobbq
I'd be interested to see if anyone has attempted to write legal documents
using a logical engineered language like Lojban.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban)

I wonder if the cost of having people learn to use a logical engineered
language is greater or less than than the cost of hashing out ambiguities in
other languages later.

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dctoedt
There's a huge chicken-and-egg problem: Few people want to be the first mover
in an area as dark and mysterious as "The Law" (I'm being sarcastic). Add to
that, the capture of contract drafting by lawyers, many of whom _prefer_ to
write hard-to-understand legalese to try to keep the mystery going and to
bolster their own employment prospects.

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jlg23
The problems discussed in the article are not relevant anymore today:

We can now have many professional translators work on the same documents. It's
not like we have to copy treaties manually, go on a months-long journey by
boat, horse or foot just to get a second opinion on a translation.

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Timpy
I don't think availability of documents was at all implied to be the issue.
It's more about two actors arguing over semantics, but each actor has a
different set of rules to make their case.

~~~
jlg23
Which one would not sign in a time where translations can be checked
instantaneously by a legion of translators. You don't have to trust a single
translation anymore, you have enough translators to discuss every possible way
of misinterpretations _before_ accepting a translation.

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afterburner
Made me think of the TNG episode with the Sheliak.

~~~
D-Coder
When Muammar Gaddafi spoke at the United Nations.

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Svip
> In the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 242, the French
> text instructed Israel to withdraw from ‘des territoires’ (the territories)
> it occupied during the 1967 Six-Day War. The English text, however, merely
> read ‘territories’, removing the definite article and thus leaving ambiguous
> how much territory Israel should cede.

This is inaccurate. « Des territoires » would be more accurately translated as
'some territories' or just 'territories', the author is thinking of « les
territoires ».

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lovasoa
That is wrong. The french version stated:

> Retrait des forces armées israéliennes des territoires occupés lors du
> récent conflit.

In this context, "des" means "de les". It is indeed a definite article.

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dmurray
Isn't it ambiguous? I would translate "withdraw from territories" and
"withdraw from the territories" the same way (edit: so does Google Translate).
It's a failure by the translator who should have worded it "retrait...de tous
les territoires" or "retrait...de certaines territoires" (withdrawal from all,
or some of the territories) as appropriate.

It's clear in the context of a good-faith negotiation that Israel wasn't being
given the option to withdraw from one square metre and keep the rest. But the
language gives some plausible deniability to their supporters.

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duxat_staglatz
"withdraw from territories" would be translated as "Retrait des forces armées
israéliennes _de_ territoires occupés lors du récent conflit" and "withdraw
from the territories" as "Retrait des forces armées israéliennes _des_
territoires occupés lors du récent conflit". It is not ambiguous at all.

