Language Awareness: Trade Facilitation Terms

These pages are offered to students who are anxious about the way the English language is being used in the professional environment.

Here’s an extract from the Introduction to the revised second edition of the English-Russian Glossary of Trade Facilitation Terms given to encourage you to think about the language, and to realize what an effective tool it is when you can use it with confidence.

Belarus, Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation established in January 2010 the Customs Union of EurAsEC to ensure the free movement of goods among its Member States and create favourable conditions for trade with third countries.

The Commission of the Customs Union actively implements globally accepted trade facilitation methods for simplifying, harmonizing, standardizing and automating trade procedures. The Commission is currently working on the creation of an Integrated Information System for Foreign and Mutual Trade of the Customs Union. The system will incorporate a Single Window functional segment, and should greatly facilitate trade with third countries through aligned trade-data-exchange standards.

The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) serves as the focal point within the United Nations system for the development of norms, standards and policy recommendations regarding the facilitation of international trade. UNECE’s recent recommendations on the principles of the Single Window for export and import clearance are widely recognized in the European Union, the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Customs Organization (WCO) and in many countries and business associations throughout the world.

The English-Russian Glossary of trade facilitation terms has been developed by some of the world’s most skilled trade experts from UNECE and the Secretariat of the Commission of the Customs Union (CCU) for over the years.

This Glossary is intended for professionals in the field of trade regulation, government officials, company managers, teachers and university students. It aims at providing practical assistance in developing international economic relations, common standards and tools for trade facilitation. It should be of help for international trade negotiators, linguists and translators, by providing the basis for standard translation of these terms for all stakeholders.

This Glossary covers: (a) general terms used in the literature and specialized

discussions, such as trade facilitation, coordinated border management, data elements, supply chain, EDI, or national trade and transport facilitation bodies; (b) names of documents/forms that are used in international trade and transport, and whose simplification and streamlining are the objective of trade facilitation; (c) terms related to trade, Customs, freight forwarding, and transportation procedures; (d) terms used in the WTO negotiations on trade facilitation; (e) international legal instruments providing for trade facilitation measures.

During the preparation of the Glossary, it became clear that in many cases multiple terms and expressions were used in the Russian language to denote a single established term in English. But sometimes there was no Russian equivalent at all.

For example, at least three different terms are used in Russian to express the concept of “trade facilitation”:

(a) „упрощение процедур торговли“ (simplification of trade procedures) – a term that has acquired broad use in UNECE and in various circles dealing with trade facilitation. It has become the established United Nations term in Russian, but has a much narrower meaning than the generally accepted definition of trade facilitation as the simplification, harmonization, standardization (alignment with international standards), and automation of trade procedures, which makes the movement of goods and supporting information faster and more reliable;

(b) „содействие торговле“, is another term in use, but practically it means a different thing, namely trade promotion. Many technical assistance projects in Central Asia and the Caucasus have selected this term in spite of the confusion that this creates;

(c) „облегчение торговли“ (or „облегчение условий торговли“) is the only literal translation, but sounds inappropriate in Russian, and was not adopted by the United Nations translation service in the past probably for this reason. The term is still in use, however, in various official documents in the Russian Federation.

UNECE and the United Nations terminologists have adopted the term „упрощение процедур торговли“ as the Russian translation of trade facilitation to avoid confusion.

The term trade and transport facilitation is increasingly used to denote simplifying, harmonizing, standardizing and automating trade procedures, where transport is a major channel through which international trade actually takes place. This concept covers the whole supply chain rather than concentrating exclusively on separate sectors such as Customs procedures. It covers all participants in the international trade transaction — from buyers and sellers to transporters, freight forwarders and the banking sector.

Essentially, the concept covers four areas: (a) streamlining and automation of trade information flows; (b) establishing public-private partnerships involving all stakeholders in trade facilitation in a country; (c) transit facilitation; and (d) facilitation of border-crossing procedures and coordinated border management.

Another term, which causes some confusion, is business process. Sometimes this concept is referred to as „деловые операции“. The meaning of this Russian term (“business transactions” rather than “processes”) is different from the English

counterpart. A more appropriate translation would be „бизнес-процесс“ or „деловой процесс“.

A pair of terms which raised questions in the Russian texts was “cargo” vs. “goods” („груз“ vs. „товар“ in Russian). The same object may be referred to by both terms and, on the basis of consultations with experts, it was decided to distinguish between terms used primarily from a Customs perspective, where the term „товар“ (goods) would be appropriate, as opposed to terms primarily used from the perspective of a freight forwarder or carrier, where the term „груз“ would be more appropriate.

Another example is the translation of the term “Customs formalities” into Russian. For some reasons of prestige, some Soviet Customs managers decided to translate the term instead of Customs formalities („таможенные формальности“) “Customs processing” („таможенное оформление“), which distorts the original meaning of the term. In the present Glossary we translate the term “Customs formalities” as „таможенные формальности“.

For further information go to:

http:www.tsouz.ru/db/it/conf/Documents/KTSdocs/glossary_ed2_rev2.pdf