EU Savings Directive criticized/Besteuerung von Zinserträgen
am 04.08.2006 von Transblawg
In a Financial Times article still online, the EU Savings Directive comes in for some criticism, particularly in connection with its having been translated into French and back again.
Council Directive 2003/48/EC of 3 June 2003 on taxation of savings income in the form of interest payments
Richtlinie 2003/48/EG des Rates vom 3. Juni 2003 im Bereich der Besteuerung von Zinserträgen
The directive was intended to tax EU citizens’ offshore savings, but after it was agreed with all 25 EU member states and with non-members (Switzerland, Liechtenstein), it had so many loopholes that not much tax will be collected.
EU officials speak of “appalling” translation errors as the English version of the text was rendered into French and then back into English. Loopholes were inserted, including the glaring exemption from the tax of trusts and foundations. “The amount raised from withholding taxes in these offshore centres is tiny, but not surprising,” admits one EU official.
Rather like the typist’s error known to law firms, it seems to me that the translator’s error means a drafting choice.
I don’t know what the process was in this case or whether translators were involved, but I refer again to the Clarity articles I recently mentioned.
Some details from William Robinson’s article:
the first draft is written by the relevant technical department and must be in either English or French, which is not the native language of most of the drafters, who may also have little drafting experience and are inclined for both reasons to follow precedents uncritically
it is then examined by …
Serial Translation
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[Kein Titel]
Jurabilis / Pretty neat project! Contact torsten.jochem@gmail.com directly for more information. ------------------------ Vyjayanthi Rao (Professor at the Anthropology department as well as GPIA) is supporting a project of a very well known Chinese artist, wh…
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German-English translation weblog
Transblawg / Translation in the Trenches - ‘a blow-by-blow [account?] of a dog-eat-dog world’ is a translator’s weblog I’m unfamiliar with. I have my suspicions as to who Trench Warrior might be, but perhaps I’m wrong. Anyway, he men…
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