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What Steps Are Involved Before a Translated Law Is Made Available to the Public?
Development of Translation of laws and
regulations is carried out based on the plan (Translation
Development Plan) decided by the "Liaison Conference of the
Relevant Ministries and Agencies for Developing a Foundation for
Promoting Translation of Japanese Laws and Regulations into Foreign
Languages".
The process is as explained in the document
entitled Law Translation Workflow. First, the responsible ministry
or agency prepares a draft translation of the law in question and
submits it to the Ministry of Justice. The Ministry of Justice then
has the draft proofread by a native English speaker, evaluated by a
legal expert, and checked by a coordinator who is familiar with
Japanese and English-language law. The responsible ministry or
agency decides on a translation for release in consideration of the
results of the evaluations and checks that have taken place at the
Ministry of Justice, and that version is made available on the JLT
Website as the finalized translation.
As you can see, many steps are involved
before the finalized translation of a law is made available to the
public, and these take time, so for user convenience, the Ministry
of Justice takes draft translations that have passed an established
evaluation screening, marks them clearly as tentative translations,
and makes them available to the public in advance, before making
available the finalized translations.