A difficult task: translating ICA-Req into french

Alice Chateau presented this morning the work achieved by a team of French young professionals working on a volunteer basis under the leadership of Marie-Anne Chabin (Archive 17) to deliver a French version of the ICA standard, ICA-Req. This ICA project not only aims to provide the translation, but also to develop a reflection on the adaptation of concepts to a different professional culture and practice. Finally, the project will help to develop guidelines for translating ICA professional content, ensuring a high level of quality.

Alice insisted on the importance of the dissemination of standards, whose first step is obviously the translation. At the international level, we have to deal with professional and cultural diversity and it is not always easy to get a consensus, even in a single culture, about the translation/adaptation of certain concepts (how to translate “records” and “records management”? ),. The obvious conclusion is that you cannot provide a good translation if you do not have a strong (and a concrete) command of the concept. That is why the team which was set up by ICA is composed by 10 young professionals coming from different backgrounds, understanding the concepts for having putting them into practice, and of course, with a high level of English.

What about the follow up? A second important step for dissemination will be to think about implementation scenarios in different cultural and working environments, especially addressed to the developing world (there is no interest in developing standards which nobody will use because they are not understandable in any context). This is the objective of a new project phase, proposed by the National Archives of Australia. An international working group has already been set up and started to work. No doubt that the experience of our young French colleagues will be helpful in defining implementation scenarios for the francophone world.

Alice announced that the French version of ICA-Req will be available by the end of June.

We thank the translation team!