Lost in Translation: Language and Cross-national Comparison in Industrial Relations

By considering the Italian and the English versions of a number of official documents issued by the European Union through the EUR-lex service, this paper investigates a range of translation issues relevant to the discourse of industrial relations. Specifically, the article attempts to deal with one of the most common problems in cross-national comparison, that of establishing a connection between concepts, institutions and practices across national systems. To this end, some instances of ambiguous rendition are analysed to point out the main difficulties stemming from comparing IR concepts cross-nationally. The research results suggest a lack of equivalence between the source and the target texts under examination that undermines the clarity and precision of the final outcome. The paper calls on IR practitioners and academics to consider IR institutions in context and to promote the collaboration of international academic research in order to gain an in-depth understanding of official documentation produced in different languages. In addition the paper points out that in order to make effective comparisons between countries, a knowledge of their industrial relations systems should be supplemented by mastery of their languages.