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The importance of translated standards

In ISO almost all meetings are conducted in English and standards and other documents needs to be translated in order to get the widest spread in the world making them fully available for everyone. At its 2nd plenary meeting, ISO/TC 292 discussed the importance of translating ISO standards into other languages. The Russian delegation has put a special focus on translations so we took the opportunity to discuss the issue with Viacheslav Krapukhin and Elena Arefieva.

Could you describe the Russian interest in work of ISO/TC 292?

At the Bali meeting the Russian delegation included four experts representing our national  mirror  committee TC 71 which is run by the Russian standard body GOST R (Viacheslav Krapukhin, Oleg Volkov, Elena Arefieva and Elena Linnik). We are very much interested in the work of ISO/TC 292. Perhaps most importnat for us is the work with ISO 22326 which originally was a proposal from us and Oleg Volkov is serving as its project leader. This project will lead to an ISO standard about emergency management and the ability to monitor facilities with identified hazards.

At the moment we are also participating the work on ISO 22319 which will be a guideline on how to involve spontaneous volunteers when disasters strike. We in are as well involved in the revision of ISO 22320 providing guidelines for incidence response. 

Since transaltion are important to us, we contribute in the terminology work of WG 1 making sure that words are easily translated to Russian. All languages are different and it is therefore vital that standards are written not only from an English point of view. We need to respect that some words may be perfect for English use but impossible to translate in some other languages and therefore  avoided   

ISO/TC 292 is in the beginning of its journey so we find it important to be part of the discussion of the roadmap for standardization development within the committee.

How does Russia work with translation of ISO Standards?

The Russian system of standards for security and emergency management has been successfully developing for more than 20 years. The body of relevant Russian standards include over 60 documents that can be divided into different groups such as:

  • monitoring and forecast;
  • safety and security of national economic assets;
  • population safety and security;
  • communication and warning;
  • emergency response;
  • life saving equipment, etc.

The Russian experts of TC 292 have prepared four official identical translations of the following international standards:

  • ISO 22300 Societal security — Terminology;
  • ISO 22320 Societal security — Emergency management — Requirements for incident response;
  • ISO 22315 Societal security — Mass evacuation — Guidelines for planning;
  • ISO 22324 Societal security — Emergency management — Guidelines for colour coded alerts.

The first two standards served the basis for the development of two national standards identical to the international ones. We expect that another two standards, ISO 22315 and ISO 22324, will soon be adopted as national standards as well.

How can standards help the implementation of the Sendai Framework program?

As pointed out in the Sendai Framework, the further development of DDR standards should be implemented based on modern research and international best practices;

We believe that further efforts to improve international and national standardization should address the key issues raised by the Sendai Framework related to enhancing the resilience of communities and cities, development and adoption of sets of indicators to reflect the resilience of communities and cities, as well as standards in the field of emergency and risk management.