Web Semantics: Brussels English By Bruce SterlingEmail Author . May 11, 2013 | *All bureaucracies create some bureau-speak, but the European Union is a special case because they’ve got so much regulation going on while most of them don’t speak English as a first language. *I would not expect “Brussels English” to get any closer to grammatically correct British English; on the contrary I would expect it in future to drift into areas of machine translation jargon, since that’s a lot cheaper than hiring human translators who are as skilled as the author of this document. ec.europa.eu/translation/english/guidelines/documents/misused_english_terminology_eu_publications_en.pdf Comitology Explanation: There are 1 253 instances of the word ‘comitology’ in EUR-Lex. However, not only does the word not exist outside the EU institutions, but it is formed from a misspelt stem (committee has two ‘m’s and two ‘t’s) and a suffix that means something quite different (-ology/-logy means ‘the science of’ or ‘the study of’. It is therefore highly unlikely that an outsider would be able to deduce its meaning, even in context. Example: ‘The Commission must draft new rules setting out the powers and workings of the bodies replacing the Committees in the framework of the now-abolished comitology procedure, to ensure that the new system operates properly32.’ Alternative: The official term is ‘committee procedure’. Contradictory procedure Explanation: ‘Contradictory procedure’ does not exist in English as a fixed expression, although, of course, a procedure can be contradictory38. The dictionary definitions of contradictory are: ‘involving, of the nature of, or being a contradiction’ or ‘given to contradicting’, and it is unlikely that an uninitiated reader would understand what our ‘contradictory procedure’ is, even in context. Example: ‘The rights of the operators should be guaranteed through a contradictory procedure with its Flag State, the criteria for the listing should be clear, objective and transparent, and the de-listing process when the criteria are not met any longer should also be foreseen39.’ Alternatives: There are some grounds for retaining ‘contradictory procedure’ as the technical term for the Court’s inter partes discussion procedure with the Commission, as it has become the technical term for this event (although we used to call it, rather more informatively, the ‘bilateral discussion procedure’). However, we must always bear in mind that people beyond our immediate circle will not understand it… Modality Explanation: ‘Modality’ is one of those words which people (a) swear is correct and (b) say they have to use because the Commission does so (the example below is a case in point). The trouble is that it is not English – at least not in the meaning applied in our texts. EUR-Lex contains over 2 000 cases in which it is used to mean ‘procedure’, but this does not make it mean procedure. In English, it is a rare and quite specialised word (only 50 or so hits in the British National Corpus), whose main meanings relate to grammar, philosophy, medicine and physiology. Example: ‘Evaluating such a unique scheme is a particular challenge for all actors involved. Evaluation modalities have gone through significant changes over recent years75.’ Alternatives: procedure, method, mode.
Posted on: Wed, 11 Sep 2013 08:13:56 +0000
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