From The Times Online:

Shakespeare and Keats may have written the finest verses, Kant and Nietzsche expressed the greatest philosophical thoughts, while Verdi’s songs are supreme. But when it comes to writing down the law, the undisputed kings were Montesquieu and Napoleon.

That is the conclusion of a campaign to establish French as the benchmark legal language of the European Union.
...
"The Italian language is the language of song, German is good for philosophy and English for poetry,” Mr Druon said. “French is best at precision, it has a rigour to it. It is the safest language for legal purposes.”


Question for debate:

1) Should the EU establish a "benchmark" legal language? If so, what should it be?

2) Should the UN do the same? If so, what should it be?

1) Should the EU establish a "benchmark" legal language? If so, what should it be?

This doesn't seem to be a very good idea to me. It's certain to cause resentment from speakers of other languages. It would be better, I think, to have all documents translated into all of the languages of the parties involved, and these translations accepted, before any legal agreements are made. Of course, this means more work; but international relations have never been simple.

2) Should the UN do the same? If so, what should it be?

A somewhat more complex problem, given the vast number of world languages. However, I think the same principle should hold. All officials statements made by the United Nations should be translated, at the very least, into all the "major" languages of the world. (It's a matter of judgment what these languages might be, but I assume it would be based on the number of people who understand the language.) When a statement involves people who understand only a "minor" language, it should be translated into that tongue as well. In both cases, persons fluent in the languages involved should have a chance to object to mistranslations and ambiguities.

One may ask what should be done when all of this fails, and no agreement on language can be reached. I suppose that each such case would require a different approach. Perhaps neutral arbitration in another language, agreed to by the parties involved, would be appropriate. Sometimes you just have to fall back on the de facto language of negotiation. In this day and age, that's likely to be English. It hasn't always been, and it won't always be.

I reject the notion that French is somehow more "precise" than other modern lanaguages. If you want a precise language, you either need to go with an artificial one (and Esperanto, the most popular of such, is still understood by very few people) or a dead one, which can be made precise by scholars.

Latin, anybody?

The EU should pick a language to do all their business in. They should choose a living language (one that is getting new words) so French is out. I am an American so my saying choose English may seem Americentric but actually I say choose English because it is the current language of technology.

The UN should definitely do all of its business in English.

Absolute class A rubbish!

French serves no purpose as a legal language to any one but Francophones and frankly, the idea of our laws being incomprehensible to allt he rest of us is so ridiculous that even the towering stupidity of the EU could hardly conceive of it as anything but a purely political move.


1) Should the EU establish a "benchmark" legal language? If so, what should it be?

It should be English if anything, but I'm depressed by the thought of the EU. I grow more antagonistic towards it with everything I hear of the Union. I want out. I want nothing to do with this diabolical and down right evil conspiracy. This debate is not really about language, it is about increasing the power of the EU over its member states by yet another small step on the way to the federal European super state wet dream.


2) Should the UN do the same? If so, what should it be?

It makes more sense for the UN to adopt three or four main languages than have the vast multitude of languages it currently must use. An idea might be to adopt one major language from each continent.

1) Should the EU establish a "benchmark" legal language?

Probably. Nuances of meaning in the U.S. Constitution generate reams of debate in one language. Imagine if there were two or more equally authoritative translations. Would judges and lawmakers then have to conform to all of the translations, or just one of their choosing? If I didn't violate the Spanish translation, but only the French and Flemish translations, have I committed a crime if I only speak Spanish? Picking one or two languages as an official standard is usually a good way to go.

If so, what should it be?

There are many precise legal documents written in French, including many treaties, diplomatic documents, and UN documents. It is probably the volume and precision of these international legal documents that would make French a reasonable choice for precision in international law, more than any inherent precision of the language itself.

Historically, Europe used Latin as its standard language of laws, even though it was not the native language in most jurisdictions. There are several advantages to writing laws in a dead or artificial language which don't have the kind of baggage local dialects can bring. Today, the main problem with perpetuating Latin is its usage in the Vatican, as well as unwanted comparisons with other periods when Europeans were subjugated under laws foreign to their local regions. Were it not for the political overtones of Latin, it would probably be a good standard language for EU law.

If the EU were interested in citizens of Europe being able to read and understand EU law untranslated, it would be written in English. The following is cited here attributed to The European, 17 Jan 1993 (The EC is now the EU):
The European also reports that English is widely spoken in Europe, even outside of where it is an official language.
However, being more widely readable by citizens is not always the most important goal of a standard version of international law. Translations of the standard to local languages will probably be better for that purpose. The ability of a standard legal language to directly reference heavily negotiated nuances of meaning in other international diplomatic documents tends to put French on par with English, if not giving it a slight advantage.

2) Should the UN do the same? If so, what should it be?

From the Wikipedia article:
The debate over using one language as its standard is mentioned, too:

It might be worth mentioning that many U.N. conspiracy theorists either don't want the U.N. to standardize on a single language, or would count such a move as evidence of the U.N. behaving the way Hal Lindsey and others claim would be consistent with end times prophecies. The same page that cites the European article also cites this from Midnight Call, 1993: How much influence such ideas hold may not really matter; EU and UN member nations do not appear willing to officially standardize on one language any time soon, and the standardization of the EU on one language would only apply to some countries on one continent, not exactly the whole world.

Standardization on an official language would seem to be the least of the U.N.'s problems. Managing language differences is a well-understood part of diplomacy and the U.N.'s operation. To the extent anything ever works at the U.N., using multiple languages seems to have worked well enough for half a century, so I see no compelling need to adopt only one language as a UN standard.

Edited to add: The reason multiple languages tend to work at the U.N. is that its focus is more on foreign policy than domestic policy, whereas the E.U. tends to get involved with issues that the U.N. normally leaves to domestic policy. Because the policies of the E.U. will tend to affect the daily lives of more Europeans than the U.N. usually does, it seems to prefer more precision than the U.N., so the EU might be better served by choosing one or two authoritative versions or translations for many of its documents.

1) Should the EU establish a "benchmark" legal language? If so, what should it be?

Wow, that is such a complicated question overall. I mean if you translated a slayer song into French would the meaning behind the song remain intact? Slayer is a music group just for your information in the example. So in reference to a legal language and that most western languages are derivatives of Latin a framework would have to be established that showed at least universal cognition of the words and meaning, from simple units like a sentence to more complex structures such as a report.

The only reason I could see this being successfully in Europe in it could grow the multi lingual concentration in the respective populations in Europe.

2) Should the UN do the same? If so, what should it be?

The U.N cant agree to anything overall. This giving international insecurities and conservatism would never fly, I mean think of everyone speaking a same language? Do you understand the ramifications of that, I mean we simply don’t view reality the same, we all have our own individual truths about reality, and that’s not insane, trying to find what reality happens to be is though.

This is a good point - translation is an art as well as a science, and the background and bias of a translator can find its way into important documents, though the differences may be very subtle.

The following site has some information about languages spoken around the world: http://www.krysstal.com/spoken.html

According to this list, English and Spanish are spoken by many more people around the world than French. IF the EU is interested in participating in global transactions and not just improving communication among themselves, perhaps these should be the official languages. For Europe's internal affairs, there may be an argument for English and French. According to this web site (http://www2.ignatius.edu/faculty/turner/languages.htm), though the data is a few years old, French is natively spoken by only 80 million people but is a secondary language for another 190 million people.

That being said, the whole question of an official language for the EU is a political fuse that could lead to explosive reactions by EU members. Everyone likes their own language best, so how can you get politicians to agree on a common language unless one language has an overwhelming representative majority in the EU (which isn't the case)? The United States hasn't even declared English as its official language, even though an overwhelming (but diminishing) percentage of its citizens speak English natively.


This is also well said. I think language is a minor issue compared to other difficulties keeping the UN from accomplishing its mission.

Regarding an official UN language, I could add that I don't really care about anything the UN does as long as they don't interfere with my life or my government, but perhaps that would expose my inherent bias against the UN and would be better suited for another debate. If language translation really is slowing the UN down (and I don't think it is), I won't lose any sleep over it.

And here I thought this was America's debate. What possible interest to us could it be how the Europeans decide to express their laws? They can write them in classical Latin or Old High Norse, for all I care.

Yup, it is America's debate, not "Debate about America". If I thought it worth the trouble, I might search through past threads for you blasting Americans for being provincials who don't bother to learn anything about anyone beyond their own shores, unless, of course, we're planning on either invading them and stealing all their X, or planting a few hundred thousand McDonald's and utterly destroying their culture. But instead, I'll just blithely attribute the sentiment to you anyhow even though you may have never said any such thing, then I'll say, "Whaaat? This is what you wanted!" Why, Jaime and Mike are even gracious enough to let interesting and charming folks from all over the world join the gabfest.


I suppose I'll answer my own questions now...

Question for debate:

It should be noted that the French did make a game try at it, tossing bones, er, compliments around to the other key languages. They shoulda remembered Spanish though, terrible faux pas on their part.

1) Should the EU establish a "benchmark" legal language? If so, what should it be?
Yup. Binary. Probably be pretty cumbersome though.
In lieu of binary, I'll go with ... ...
German. yeah, because I can think of nothing more likely to cause the EU to either spin apart like a drunken conga line, or collapse in a fit of laughing as the collective French head explodes like an overshaken bottle of champagne. Either way, it'll be fun watching.

Practically speaking though, English, of the Scottish variety. Nobody can understand it, not even most Scots, so everybody will be on the same footing.

2) Should the UN do the same? If so, what should it be?
Yup. American English. Because this is AMERICA'S DEBATE

If not American English, then, no, no single language.

1) There are already simple and precise rules under which laws are worked in respect of language within the EU. In the case of translation interpretation issues the rules return the parties to the copy made in the language of the origin of the draft law - so that the original spirit and word is maintained. This means any and all of the EU's official 23 languages are the "legal" language.

And that is the way to keep it; until such a point as one single language dominates Europe as the 1st language of the majority of speakers then it is goign to have to be so. The EU has long been keen to maintain the language diversity it has inside its borders. I am also not surprised by the origin of the suggestion; the Academy has long struggled to maintain the prominence and purity of the French language - in a way I wonder how much that has cost it.... is English VHS to French BetaMax.

2) Actually the Un already does, as already stated by others. 6 languages for meetings, 2 for teh Secretariat. Given the list of the six then it makes significant sense - the only "biggie" left out is Hindi and it is being considered added. If it was then over 90% of the World would understand every meeting.... that is no mean feat. Narrowing it down to a single language just seems a little foolish and largely unnecessary.
http://www.un.org/Depts/DGACM/faq_languages.htm

No, a benchmark legal language is an utterly pointless idea. All EU laws are enforced by the legal systems of their member states - there is no EU police force, or legal system, or courts. (The European Court of Human Rights, which member states that have not incorporate the European Declaration of Human Rights into domestic law use as a court of final appeal in human rights cases, is an institution of the Council of Europe, a body with a different composition of member states and no legal links to the EU.)

So, all EU law would have to be translated from whatever language in which it was drafted and into the domestic language(s) of the member states that have to enforce it.

This is a backdoor attempt to restore French, and therefore France, to primacy in the institutions of the EU, a position they had at it's outset but which they have progressively lost, especially in this millennium as new members in Eastern Europe that sit more closely to the Anglophone, small-EU end of the spectrum, and farther away from the supranational authority, Franco-German axis. (Which, since the election of Angela Merkel, has been even more isolating for the French poltical elite.

The same goes for the UN, which has rather less legislative power than the EU anyway.

Now, the language in which the elected and appointed representatives conducy their business, and the civil service apparatus around them, is one for legitimate argument, but since it affects only those people directly involved, it doesn't much matter whether they do it in English, French, Swahili or Fijian Pidgin, because anything important is that affects anyone in any member states will have to be translated.

Regarding the UN and adding Hindi as another official language, seems like it would be a poor idea to me. Not to knock the umpteen million native speakers of Hindi, but in how many nations is it the primary language? There is, to my knowledge, no movement afoot to make Portugese one of the official languages, and its spoken on three continents, and in more countries than Russian.