《Translation at the United Nations as Specialised Translation》.doc

Translation at the United Nations as Specialised Translation Deborah Cao, Xingmin Zhao, translator at the United Nations Office, Geneva ABSTRACT Multilingualism is one of the foundations of the United Nations (UN) and? translation of UN documents plays an important political and practical role in the functioning of the Organ isation. This paper argues that UN translation is a special ised area of translational activity and has its own characteristics and special demands necessitated and dictated by the nature of the work of the UN and international diplomacy and developed over the sixty years history. Thus, UNs experience in translation can provide an important insight and lesson for translators, translation organ isations and translation educational institutions. This article focuses on the nature of translation at the UN as a special ised translation activity and describes and discusses some of the linguistic and institutional features of UN translation. KEYWORDS United Nations document translation; institutional language; multilingual instruments Introduction Multilingualism is one of the foundations of the United Nations (UN). Accordingly, translation of documents into its official languages, that is, Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish, plays an important political and practical role in the functioning of the Organ isation. Furthermore, translation at the UN is a special ised area of translational activity. It has its own characteristics and special demands necessitated and dictated by the nature of the work of the UN and international diplomacy and developed over the sixty years history. For many years, the UN has also been one of the world major employers of professional translators and interpreters in its six official languages. The UNs experience in translation, both positive and negative, provides an important insight and lesson for translators, translation organ isations and translation educational institutions. Despite the long his