Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations

Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations

Statement by Mr. Evgeniy Zagaynov, Deputy Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the United Nations, at the opening ceremony of the exhibition “Nuremberg: The Birth of a Profession”

Dear excellences, colleagues and friends,

I am glad to welcome you at the opening ceremony of the exhibition “Nuremberg: The Birth of a Profession” on Nuremberg and the birth of simultaneous interpretation.

2016 marked the seventieth anniversary of the conclusion of work of the Nuremberg trials. The history of both international criminal justice and simultaneous interpretation began with this extremely complicated exercise.

Nuremberg Tribunal was the most significant legal milestone of its era. The Tribunal’s decisions greatly influenced the whole international community in the post-war period and continue to be fully relevant today. It was made possible with tireless work and dedication of interpreters – pioneers of their profession.

The United Nations serves as a platform for global decision-making for representatives of diverse cultures. The clear and concise communication between the countries cannot be achieved without the correct interpretation and translation.

Russia traditionally supports the principle of multilingualism at the UN as well as in the regulatory and legal framework of the Organization. Each year the General Assembly adopts a resolution on the pattern of conferences and resolutions on multilingualism are adopted once in two years, in which we support the necessity to provide all UN language services with equal conditions of work, equally qualified personnel and equal amount of funding. These documents are focused on hindering the degradation of quality and limiting of scope of the conference services. 

We undertake active efforts to achieve full parity of the official languages in order to use the unified standards of quality control for the documentation prepared by external contractors, improvement of the quality and the scope of conference services in times when methods of work are changing, fastening the process of the digitalization of old UN documents.

Recently the UN Member States have agreed on the draft resolution "The role of professional translation in connecting nations and fostering peace, understanding and development".

We expect that this resolution will be adopted by consensus on May 24 at a meeting of the UN General Assembly. We invite those states that have not done so to co-sponsor the resolution. Such a step will be a convincing confirmation of the need to promote the translation as a basic tool in maintaining multilingualism.

Thank you very much.