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Comment by dmurray | Hacker News Reader

This seems like a solved problem: agree at the time which translation takes precedence in the event of a dispute. Use a third language (historically French was the language of diplomacy, now English, but for modern treaties you could pick any major world language) if, as is likely, neither side likes the idea of the binding version being in the other side's language.

The same problem has to be solved in countries with more than one official language. In Ireland, the Irish-language version of a law takes precedence. This is a little awkward in theory since parliamentarians, civil servants, judges and lawyers overwhelmingly do not speak Irish to a sufficient level to draft, debate or interpret the law, and laws often exist for years before anyone gets around to translating them and thereby creating the "definitive version". But in practice, the legal system generally works.

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Third party language implies that either citizens of country 1 must learn this third party language to the proficiency needed to understand legalese; or to both be expected to know, understand and apply the law but not be able to read it.

Proficiency in another language is the minimum I expect of diplomats. It's not like every citizen has to speak it.

Which is my second point: citizens will have to follow and vote on the law of their country, including international treaties, without understanding them since they are not written in their language.

AIUI, a treaty is not law unto itself. Rather, the parties to a treaty will pass laws that implement said treaty.

This is not relevant for the political side of the question, e.g. it would not be possible for a citizen on its own to judge whether the merits of a treaty. Say, your senator campaigns on withdrawing from the Iran deal: how are you supposed to assess this position if the deal was in third-party-language Pashto?

In addition, I can present the case of France, where judges must disregard laws that contradict treaties (the hierarchy of norms being Constitution > Treaties > Laws > Executive orders). Therefore treaties, even with no national law to implement them, have a direct effects on the law.

Treaties are accorded to the power of law in the treaty signatories, below their Constitutional documents but above that of legislative laws.

Once a treaty enters into effect, a nation is bound by the terms of the treaty even if they do not have implementing laws. However, in many cases treaties don't have any consequences if signatories don't pass implementing laws (see, e.g, the Kyoto Protocol).

I imagine most voters do not read proposed bills in their own language as it stands, instead relying on reporters' summaries as they would for foreign language versions.

Agreed, but that's not a reason to write laws or treaties in a language the general population does not speak. That's too high a barrier to understand the rules of your nation, which should be easily accessible to every citizen. Legalese is complicated enough in your native tongue :).

Could Latin perhaps fit the bill? It's already popular with lawyers

> Could Latin perhaps fit the bill? It's already popular with lawyers

Lawyer here — very few of us know more Latin than the odd artifact such as ejusdem generis or contra proferentem, which occasionally are relevant to contract interpretation. And those of us of a certain age who grew up Catholic will remember bits and pieces of the old Latin Mass. Otherwise, Latin is probably as dead to lawyers as to anyone else.

English is now the global lingua franca; while I used to be a grammar vigilante, not long ago it occurred to me that in the linguistic "marketplace," if we native speakers want English to outcompete, e.g., Mandarin or Spanish, we need to be willing to let the language evolve so that it's easier for non-native speakers to learn and use confidently.

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