Agreement In Two Languages

As a general rule, for international treaties and contracts translated into different languages, there will be a clause indicating which language is controlled, or he will say that all versions are the same way. When a bilingual contract is required, companies with transactions abroad sometimes use a two-column format, side by side, in the contract, depending on the country. This type of contract is common when it comes to customers, suppliers or partners with subsidiaries or branches in Spanish-speaking, Chinese, Korean, Arab, Ukrainian, Russian and other Eastern European languages and, to a lesser extent, Italian and German. Unfortunately, in many situations, lawyers write these types of contracts in English with few thoughts involved in other languages in transactions. The most commonly used languages for multilingual commercial contracts are English, Chinese, Korean, German, Spanish and Russian. Sometimes lawyers think, at the last second, to add a basic language that indicates that English is the “official language” of the contract – while acknowledging and denouncing the fact that the other party is not a native English speaker. The obvious arrogance and repulsive tone with which this clause is often formulated also undermines cordial multicultural trade negotiations. With regard to the management of cross-border tasks in multinational enterprises, we must be prepared to study diversity within multidisciplinary teams and to identify the effects of cultural differences in the development and negotiation of international agreements. For example, contract management professionals must have cross-cultural understanding and training to properly manage legislative and arbitration elections and understand how to manage translations of foreign language contracts. First, in conflicts between the two languages, it is important to consider priority.

The question is what is the official language? What is mandatory? What kind of control? The agreement must be very clear. It should stipulate that the original version is in a specific language (for example. B English), and if there is a conflict or mismatch between languages, one of them takes precedence over the other. Third, the bilingual method allows for the mentalities of both parties to be taken into account and legal concepts that are understandable to all participants, which are extremely important in reaching agreement on their views and successfully implementing international commercial projects, are used in the documents. The equivalent content of the versions of documents in different languages still does not mean that they are understood in the same way by both parties to an agreement. In many cases, there may be misunderstandings, questions, suspicions or even assaults of the counterpart. The creation of documents in two languages offers the possibility of explaining ambiguous aspects, explaining the same idea from different angles or repeating it several times in order to eliminate ambiguities, to use the style and ideas of correspondence established between partners, to take due account of their specificities, etc. If the international treaty is two more languages (English, Spanish, French, German, Chinese, etc.), the language clause must determine the version that predominates in priority versions in the event of a dispute. Otherwise, international rules, such as unsteady principles, should be applied. Article 7.7 of these principles deals with linguistic differences: when a treaty is concluded in two or more identical language versions, in case of discrepancies between versions, a preference for interpretation according to a version in which the treaty was originally drawn up.