First-ever manual on EU acquis translation into Ukrainian developed under the support of EU funded project Association4U by scholars and translators from Ukraine and the EU

As Ukraine progresses towards EU accession, an important step has been taken with the development of the country’s first manual on EU acquis translation. This comprehensive bilingual manual, produced by translation experts from the EU in collaboration with four Ukrainian universities, is designed to assist in the accurate translation of EU law and terminology into Ukrainian, one of the requirements for Ukraine’s EU integration.

The universities involved are:

• Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv
• Volodymyr Vynnychenko Ukrainian Central Pedagogical University
• Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University
• Zhytomyr Ivan Franko State University

The manual was developed by scholars and experts from Ukraine and the EU and edited by Martina Bajčić, an Associate Professor at the Law Faculty of the University of Rijeka, Head of the Department of Foreign Languages, Member of the Institute of European and Comparative Law; Colin Robertson is a Scottish lawyer (Aberdeen University 1971-1975) and member of the Law Society of Scotland who worked as a lawyer in the EU Commission Legal Service, legal translator in the EU Court of Justice, and legal-linguistic reviser in the EU Council Legal Service; and Liudmyla Slavova is a Ukrainian scholar, Doctor of Sciences (Philology), full professor, professor at the Department of Theory and Practice of Translation from English, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv.

The manual covers fundamental principles of the EU law, terminology, EU legal English and provides an overview of the challenges and approaches to translating the EU acquis into Ukrainian. Published in an open access format, it serves as an important resource for both current students and future professionals in the field, as well as translators-practitioners working with EU law and other documents serving Ukraine’s EU accession process, Ukrainian civil servants approximating Ukrainian law to EU law, and professors teaching EU law and legal translation

This achievement follows a training programme initiated by the EU funded Association4U project, which ran from autumn 2020 to April 2023. The programme involved professors and students from the four universities in intensive training on translating the EU acquis, with an average of 40 participants per session.

The training and subsequent development of the handbook is an important step in updating the universities’ curricula to better equip legal translators for the tasks ahead. This initiative ensures that Ukraine will have a cadre of qualified translators and interpreters upon accession, which is essential for the proper functioning of the EU institutions.

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