Behind the Scenes: The Assemblée nationale’s Team of Translation Professionals
Quebec’s history of legislative translation dates back to the beginning of the British regime. In this article, the author examines how this service has evolved and explains the process for ensuring legislative texts are translated, revised and proofed to a standard that befits a province whose language and unique Civil Code are fundamental components of its identity.
Elizabeth Reeve
Elizabeth Reeve is a Legislative Translator at the Direction de la traduction et l’édition des lois of the Assemblée nationale du Québec.
At the Assemblée nationale du Québec, a dedicated crew of 20 highly skilled language professionals, hailing from various provinces, countries and continents, performs the challenging work of translating laws as well as an assortment of other government documents. These translators and revisers, part of the legislative translation and publishing directorate, often find themselves at the heart of the action, dealing with highly confidential documents which afford them an unusually intimate view of the inner workings of the legislative process.
Québec’s tradition of legislative translation dates back to the very beginnings of the British regime. Of course, interpreters, whose job it is to translate orally from one language to another, played a key role long before that, whether in exchanges among different First Nations or in interactions with Europeans. But with the establishment of the British military regime in 1759, the translation of written documents became a necessity, as proclamations and ordinances issued in English were translated so they could be understood by the French-speaking population.
Initially, the work was assigned to Swiss soldiers in the British army,1 and then to English descendants of French Huguenot refugees.2 However, when civil government was established in 1764, it led not only to the first use of French in British-style government institutions3 but also to the coexistence of two legal systems, the Coutume de Paris (the legal code previously used in New France) and common law, resulting in the development of unique legal terminology and concepts. The task of translating the colony’s legislative documents proved to be highly complex, and the Council of Québec’s minutes from February 1768 speak of the difficulty the Council was having finding a truly competent English-to-French translator.4 Shortly thereafter, the first official translator to the Governor and the Council, François-Joseph Cugnet, was hired. Bills would long continue to be drafted primarily in English and subsequently translated into French, but gradually, over the course of the 20th century, the reverse would come to be true.5 Nowadays, the Assemblée nationale translation team translates almost exclusively from French into English, whether it be bills or other key government documents.
Under section 133 of the Constitution Act, 1867, the Order Paper and Notices and the Votes and Proceedings for each sitting of the Assemblée must be produced in both French and English. The Order Paper is drawn up by the sittings and parliamentary procedure directorate, which then sends it on to a small, specialized group of translators.
Forwarded around 5 p.m. on the day before the sitting in question, the Order Paper must be published on the Assemblée website in both languages before 8 a.m. the next morning. As the statements, written questions and motions in the Order Paper are highly topical and deal with current events in the various ridings, it is vital that the translators keep abreast not only of national and provincial news, but also of local news from across Québec.
During each sitting, the sittings and parliamentary procedure directorate sends the translation team the different parts of the Votes and Proceedings as soon as they have been drafted. The translators work in pairs, dividing up the work as it comes in, doing any necessary research, and revising each other’s work in order to put the Votes and Proceedings online as quickly as possible. Regardless of how late a sitting ends, the Votes and Proceedings must be online in both languages before the next sitting begins.
The bulk of the translation team’s work, however, concerns bills. The Assemblée has a constitutional obligation to print and publish its laws in both French and English, with the two versions being equally authoritative. Under section 7 of the Charter of the French Language, both versions must be tabled, passed, and assented to simultaneously.
Because bills often cover a wide range of subjects and contain specialized vocabulary, legislative translation requires considerable research. However, whether a bill is prepared by the Government, the Opposition or an individual Member, until it is tabled in the Assemblée its content is highly confidential. No one outside the legislative translation and publication directorate is privy to all the different bills being worked on, which means the team cannot consult any specialists other than the legislative drafters and legal advisers who work with the translation revisers.
Of course, it is always possible to do research on the Internet or consult similar legislation from Québec and other jurisdictions, but this is not as simple as it may seem. Obviously, the quality of information varies enormously across the Internet. However, the translation team must also always consider the fact that, depending on the context, domain or even country, the same word may be translated many different ways.
Moreover, even if a bill has close similarities to existing Québec laws, as language is constantly evolving, the terms and phrasing used in previous legislation may no longer be appropriate. For example, there is a tendency nowadays to use more gender-neutral vocabulary in legislation, as well as simpler, clearer language that makes laws easier for the public to understand. The ways in which these objectives are achieved vary from one language to the next, which makes the task even more challenging.
Finally, when consulting the laws of other provinces, territories or countries, even laws dealing with the same subject as the bill being translated, team members must keep in mind the unique nature of Québec’s blend of civil law and common law, which has resulted in the development of French6 and English terminology, concepts and expressions as distinct as Québec society itself.
Since bills must be tabled in the Assemblée in both French and English simultaneously, the translation team does not have the luxury of waiting to receive the final French version before starting a translation. Translators must simply adapt their text as each new French version comes in. Ensuring that both final versions are a perfect match from both a legal and a semantic perspective not only calls for considerable research, but also requires multiple revisions and thorough proofreading –by translators, revisers, legal advisers, and a team of editors as well.
Before a bill is introduced in the Assemblée, a trio of editors reads the French and English versions aloud in parallel, from start to finish, to detect any remaining errors, typos or inconsistencies. However, the process doesn’t end there. Québec MNAs commonly make numerous amendments to a bill between its tabling and its passage by the Assemblée. All these amendments must then be translated and revised before the bill can be passed.
The Assemblée also has a long tradition of administrative translation dating back at least as far as 1780, when legislative councillor Hugh Finlay tabled a document entitled The manner of debating and passing Bills in Parliament, subsequently translated into French, in order to help councillors better understand the procedural practices of Westminster. Some have described this seven-paragraph article as the basis for parliamentary procedure in Québec.7 In 2022, the Assemblée’s translation team devoted the bulk of the legislative lull between the dissolution of the 42nd Legislature and the election of the 43rd Legislature to updating the English translation of the “descendant”, so to speak, of that text, the 1,335-page fourth edition of Parliamentary Procedure in Québec.
The Assemblée nationale’s language professionals translate everything from communications addressed to other governments and their administrations to reports, articles and tourist information, but research and rigor remain a constant. For example, a translator responsible for the menus of the Assemblée restaurants established a long-standing arrangement with the chefs to see and sample every new dish created, in order to ensure the accuracy of each English menu entry. Legislative translators never cut corners.
When I joined the Assemblée nationale four years ago, I was struck by how passionate many of my translation colleagues were about their work, especially those who had been at the Assemblée for a long time, some even for decades. I asked several of them what they liked about their jobs. They spoke of the sense of being in the thick of things and at the very heart of current affairs, as well as of the intellectual challenge, the constant learning, the stimulating variety of tasks, the frequent rushes of adrenalin, but especially of the strong sense of camaraderie among the like-minded professionals of our team.
Notes
1 Jean-Charles Bonenfant, “Perspective historique de la rédaction des lois au Québec”, Les Cahiers de droit 20, 1–2 (March 1979): 390
2 Michael McKenzie, “The Early Years of Legislative Translation in Québec”, Canadian Parliamentary Review (Spring 2009): 37
3 Bonenfant, 390
4 Christian Blais (ed.). Procès-verbaux du Conseil de Québec, 1764-1775 (Québec: Bibliothèque de l’Assemblée nationale du Québec, 2019), p. xlvii.
5 Bonenfant, 390–393.
6 Ibid., 393.
7 Christian Blais, “The Foundations of Parliamentarism in Quebec, 1764-1791”, Canadian Parliamentary Review 43, 2 (Summer 2020): 27.