Rachel Baskerville and Lisa Evans: The darkening glass - Issues for translation of IFRS
With the support of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (ICAS), Rachel Baskerville and Lisa Evans have conducted a study on translation issues in connection with IFRSs. The authors explore the question whether a truly global accounting system is possible considering the fact that translations into different languages and ways of thinking are necessary to achieve this.
The study revealed the following results:
- Translation is not impossible. The impact of translation problems can be reduced with the help of translation strategies and solutions.
- Exact equivalence is impossible. Especially when concepts have to be translated that are not part of an (accounting) culture the results will seldom be meaningful.
- Some translation problems are caused by different language structures.
- Different language families will have different translation problems.
- Official translations (e.g. by the European Commission) can vary from official translations by the IFRS Foundation.
- Some translation strategies (e.g. omitting or adding words for clarification) might give rise to concerns by standard setters or regulators.
The authors of the study arrive at the following conclusions:
- Standard setters must be aware of translation difficulties and should consider them if possible when drafting standards.
- Translating principles might be more difficult than translating rules.
- Everybody must be aware of the limits of translation.
- Some slight differences between original text and translation will always remain.
- Translators must not only have an excellent knowledge of source language and target language, but also of source accounting culture and target accounting culture.
- Accounting educators must be aware of the difficulties of understanding translated concepts.
Please click to download The darkening glass: Issues for translation of IFRS (link to the ICAS website).