PROPOSAL ON PROVISION OF TRANSLATION INTO WTO'S
OFFICIAL LANGUAGES
TENTH TRIENNIAL REVIEW
Proposal from the European Union
Revision
The following
submission, dated 27 March 2024, is being circulated at the request of the
delegation of the European Union.
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1 BACKGROUND
1.1. Transparency obligations remain at the core of the TBT Agreement.
Their fulfilment is necessary for the attainment of the objectives of the
Agreement. One of key transparency obligations is embedded in the obligation to
notify measures at the draft stage, when making comments is possible.
1.2. The Members can comment effectively only if they are able to
understand the notified measure and to correctly assess its potential impact.
This cannot be achieved without access to a reliable translation of the draft
measure. Article 10.5 of the TBT Agreement facilitates this objective when it
provides that "developed country Members shall, if requested by other
Members, provide, in English, French or Spanish, translations of the documents
covered by a specific notification or, in case of voluminous documents, of
summaries of such documents". However, this is not the case for measures
adopted and notified by developing country Members thus making it difficult to
submit comments within the 60 days commenting period.
1.3. During the Ninth Triennial Review the lack of translations of
notified measures into one of the official WTO languages was named as one of
the main challenges in the process of preparing comments on notifications by
several Members.
1.4. Available statistical information demonstrates that during the
period covered by the present Triennial Review numerous notifications submitted
by developing country Members were not made available in any of the official
languages of the WTO.[1]
1.5. Most of WTO Members, including developing country Members do not
have the capacity to translate all incoming notified measures so that their
officials and domestic stakeholders can easily assess the content of the draft
measures.
1.6. Even when some Members translate the full text of another Member's
notified measure(s) into any of the official WTO languages, there is no widely
used mechanism to either share or to inform other Members of the availability
of such translation.[2]
It is therefore important to enhance cooperation between Members through
sharing reliable translations of measures into the official WTO languages
between the Members.
1.7. Given that machine translations may contain important errors which
could lead to misinterpretations of the notified measures, it is important to
correctly identify such translations as being machine generated.
1.8. Technical regulations and conformity assessment procedures are
complex and often cover technical issues. Correct translation is key in
allowing the Members to assess the measure properly.
1.9. In the Ninth Triennial Review the Secretariat was asked to explore
the use of available AI tools such as translation software to enable the
provision of unofficial translations for all notified measures in the WTO's
three official languages.
1.10. Additionally, the Members were encouraged to announce, through
ePing, the availability of the translation of either partial or the full text
of another Member's notified measure into any of the official WTO languages.
2 PROPOSAL
2.1. Taking into account the fact that:
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