About Translations
Although the official working language of the International Accounting Standards Committee Foundation (IASC Foundation) and the IASB is English, it is crucial that users, preparers, legislators, lawyers, educators, students and all other interested groups in non-English speaking countries should have access to the IASB's standards in their native language. To ensure high-quality translations of the standards, the IASC Foundation created an official translation process in 1997, which has been used consistently in most languages ever since.
Who gets involved in an official translation?
The IASCF coordinates the translation of the standards, which, for each language concerned, involves:
- one or more translators
- a review committee coordinator
- a review committee of experts.
The coordinator and committee members are appointed by the IASC Foundation, after inviting interest when the process is about to begin; the translators are selected by the IASC Foundation, in cooperation with the coordinator for each language.
The review committee coordinator can be a representative of a professional body or of a private corporation, with a good record of involvement in IFRSs. The coordinator is responsible for the smooth running of the process, the exchange of files and comments between the committee members and the translator. He or she also chairs the review committee meetings.
The review committee members need to be native speakers of the language in question with a good knowledge of English and are usually eminent experts in IFRSs. The final composition of a review committee will typically include representatives of the big accounting firms, one or two academics, a representative from a bank or financial institution and an actuary with pensions expertise.
The translators are experienced professionals; they are asked to use special software that makes the checks for consistency and re-use of existing IFRS translation texts (both during the original project and in the future) easier.
How does the process work?
The review committee discusses and agrees on the translation of a list of key terms (individual terms and repetitive sentences) from the IFRS text. This terminology list is then given to the translator, who is supposed to use it consistently during the translation of the IFRS, or make sure that the terminology in existing translations is adapted accordingly.
The next step is the review of the translation by the committee of experts for accuracy and consistency. Their comments are sent to the coordinator, who either forwards them directly to the translator, or decides that further discussion is needed on a specific point. The coordinator has the overview of the process.
EU adoption - consequences for process & content
The European Union's decision to require listed public companies to prepare their consolidated financial statements using IFRSs from 2005 created an urgent legal requirement for the numbered, bare text of the standards to be available in all the languages of the EU Member States. To help meet this requirement without delay, the IASC Foundation agreed with the European Commission to use the IASC Foundation official translation process, with the help of the review committees, to provide the Commission with translations of the numbered, bare standards into the ten languages concerned (Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish). The translations were then reviewed by the national representatives in the EU Accounting Regulatory Committee, and with any comments inserted, were given to the Commission.
For the purposes of this project, government representatives and representatives from the Translation Services of the European Union were added to the existing members of the ten review committees. For some of these languages this was the first-ever translation of IFRSs, while for the others there were older versions that had to be updated and reviewed.
The future of IFRS translations
IFRSs are already translated and published in print into most European languages, as well as in Arabic, Chinese and Japanese. The IASC Foundation is also making the IFRSs available in electronic format in most languages, either on its Website or on CD-ROM.
For more information please contact the IASC Foundation's Senior Manager – Publications and Electronic Materials, Kenneth Creighton kcreighton@iasb.org or Ioanna Tzivani itzivani@iasb.org Translation Project Manager .