Transcript Legislation - Summer School

Legislation
Drafting guidelines and tools
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/en/techleg/index.htm
EU principles
• The drafting of a legislative act must be:
– clear, easy to understand and unambiguous
– simple, concise, containing no unnecessary
elements
– precise, leaving no uncertainty in the mind of
the reader
– appropriate to type of act and addressee
– succinct, internally consistent and consistent
with other legislation
EU: multilingualism
“Throughout the process leading to their
adoption, draft acts shall be framed in
terms and sentence structures which
respect the multilingual nature of
Community legislation; concepts or
terminology specific to any one national
legal system are to be used with care”
.
Translation issues
1.
2.
“The original text must be particularly simple,
clear and direct, since any over-complexity or
ambiguity, however slight, could result in
inaccuracies, approximations or real
mistranslations in one or more of the other
Community languages”.
“The use of expressions and phrases — in
particular, but not exclusively, legal terms — too
specific to the author’s own language or legal
system, will increase the risk of translation
problems”.
Structure of acts 1
• Title = info to identify act
– if amending act, all acts amended need to be given by
number
– number, date, year
– short title possible
• Preamble = citations, recitals, solemn forms
– Citation: sets out legal basis of act (e.g. treaty): ‘Having
regard to …’
– Recital: reasons for provisions of enacting terms :
‘Whereas…’ – numbered
Structure of acts 2
• Enacting terms = legislative part: articles
may be grouped in titles, chapters, sections
– no non-normative statements
– no reproduction or paraphrasing from other
legislation
– first article may define subject matter and
scope of act
– terms can be defined in single article at
beginning
Translation and drafting
guides
• Access to language resources
http://ec.europa.eu/translation/index_en.htm
• Interinstitutional style guide, in all languages:
http://publications.europa.eu/code/en/en000500.htm
* Fight the fog campaign
Tasks 1
1. Consult drafting guidelines:
•
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/en/techleg/index.htm
2. Consult model acts (Annex – Models)
from the guidelines. Compare language
versions of the model acts, and make lists
of common elements and structures and
their equivalents.
Tasks 2
3. Go to the UN site. http://www.un.org
Study the format and standard phrases in your
languages for a) Security Council resolutions
b) Convention of the Law of the Sea
Are the document structure and linguistic norms
different from those of the EU?
4. Consult style and translation guides for your
languages.
http://ec.europa.eu/translation/index_en.htm