TRANSLATION AND LINGUISTIC RIGHTS COMMITTEE
The Universal Declaration on Linguistic Rights

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Another major aspect of the Translation and Linguistic Rights Committee’s work has been to assist in the preparation of a Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights, which was initiated by the Catalan P.E.N. Centre.

Language is a distinguishing feature among human beings. The language ordinarily used by a community forms the basis and justification of that community: each person has the individual right to use his own language; and each linguistic community has the collective right to use its language. This has been one of the simplest and clearest of principles throughout history; but because of it, failures of understanding have been used as an excuse for conflicts of such violence that thousands of languages have been destroyed, together with their communities and cultures, for the benefit of a small number of dominant languages and their concomitant cultures. Today, with the revolution in technology and the ease of world-wide communication, many languages are in danger, and there is a prospect that most of the world’s languages are on course for extinction in the name of the efficacy, the progress, the internationalization of culture and civilization.

There are declarations and rules to promote and protect certain languages, but although urgently needed there is no declaration and no legislative body referring to all the languages or to universal linguistic rights. And so the Catalan P.E.N. Centre, the Translation and Linguistic Rights Committee and Ciemen, a cultural body studying current linguistic laws with the support of the European Commission, took a great step towards the development of a Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights by creating a network between people and associations interested in linguistic rights from all over the world.

After three years of contacts, of many preliminary plans and hundreds of pages of amendments and motions, the World Conference of Linguistic Rights was organized, attended by among others, 61 delegations from N.G.O.s, 30 P.E.N. Centres and 40 experts in linguistic law. On 6th June 1996 the U.D.L.R. was proclaimed. Since then it has been translated into 19 languages, and has received the support of N.G.O.s, of national parliaments, of Nobel Prize winners and other internationally acclaimed writers, politicians, religious leaders, artists and scientists.

P.E.N.’s Translation and Linguistic Rights Committee is continuing to work towards such a declaration being adopted by U.N.E.S.C.O. It has formed a Follow-Up committee which produces a bulletin called ENLLAC, a Catalan word meaning ‘link’. ENLLAC is the link between all the N.G.O.s, P.E.N. Centres, people and institutions involved in the U.D.L.R., their means of communication and relationship.

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