Supporting COP26

The 26^th UN Climate Change Conference was held in Glasgow from 31 October – 12 November 2021,  a milestone event with world leaders in attendance.

Sustainability is a key priority for all organisations. The current state of the planet and dire projections for its future means that now more than ever, there is a collective understanding of the need to take action to slow climate change.

The UK Government has adopted a national target to be net zero carbon by 2050, cutting emissions by 68% by 2030 and 78% by 2035 (from 1990 levels). It’s an ambitious roadmap, but a necessary one

Preparing for the Conference

The UK Government’s preparations for COP26 involved a huge amount of work including a variety of documents to research, prepare and write. Documents included texts on sustainable land use, eco-friendly farming, decarbonising road transport, press releases, briefings and preparatory papers on related ministerial meetings.  Due to the global attendee list for COP26, translation was an essential requirement.

Translation & Interpreting

A number of government partners contacted FCDO Services’ Translation & Interpreting department to commission translations for COP26. Since early 2021 the translation team  worked with the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS), the Cabinet Office, the Department for Transport (DfT), the Department for International Trade (DIT), the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO).

The Cabinet Office required translations for ‘COP26 Explained’ – a foundation document that  set out the subject matter and objectives of the conference. The translations were vital to the communication of important messaging internationally, and to contribute towards securing consensus on key issues ahead of the Conference.

The document needed translating from English into the other United Nation languages: Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian and Spanish. Our language experts completed the translations, performed the necessary quality control checks and liaised with our customer on queries. In addition to the translation work, all versions needed to be typeset into web-displayable PDFs for publication online.

Carefully managing amendments to multi-language documents is always crucial to the success of a translation project in order to maintain consistency of message. We worked closely and collaboratively with the Cabinet Office throughout the process, and clear communication enabled the smooth delivery of this project.

Our experienced team were able to deliver the final translations on time and to the quality expected by our customer.

“We were delighted with the work delivered by the translation team. Working hand in glove with them meant we were able to provide many key documents in the UN working languages, which contributed greatly to the success of our COP26 lobbying and engagement.”

Head of International Engagement – Overseas network, Africa, regional and UN/multilateral influencers, Cabinet Office