I’m Gladis, an EN–FR translator. Biodiversity conservation is one of the fields I work in, and one of the ones I care about most. This post is about translating the Guide to Inclusive, Equitable and Effective Implementation of Target 3 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework into French, and about what happens when the experts who will use a translation are the ones reviewing it.
About me
I’m a specialized translator: a DipTrans, an RNCP Level 7 diploma in EN–FR translation (master’s level), another in EN–FR legal translation, and a BA in international relations. I also hold certificates in a range of fields, among them environmental translation, conservation standards, human rights, the SDGs and NGO management, which is the background this particular project leaned on.
Over the years, I’ve translated and revised millions of words across those fields, from power plant contracts to NGO reports, ECOSOC applications, international treaties, e-courses, and more. Along the way, I picked up TWB’s international “Access to Knowledge Award”, for empowering knowledge through translation. But the Target 3 Guide gave me something more: a room full of native French reviewers who knew the subject better than I did.
What is Target 3, and why it matters
Target 3 (better known as 30×30) is a conservation superhero. It says that by 2030, at least 30% of our planet (land and water) must be effectively conserved and managed, through systems that are ecologically representative, well-connected, and equitably governed. Another part that matters is its explicit recognition of indigenous and traditional territories: conservation has to uphold the rights of the people who have looked after these lands for generations, and those people get a real say in how their lands and waters are managed.
Here it is in full, worth reading at least once:
Ensure and enable that by 2030 at least 30 per cent of terrestrial and inland water areas, and of marine and coastal areas, especially areas of particular importance for biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services, are effectively conserved and managed through ecologically representative, well-connected and equitably governed systems of protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures,
recognizing indigenous and traditional territories, where applicable, and integrated into wider landscapes, seascapes and the ocean, while ensuring that any sustainable use, where appropriate in such areas, is fully consistent with conservation outcomes, recognizing and respecting the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities, including over their traditional territories.
You can read the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (Decision 15/4 of COP15) here.
This one long sentence packs half a dozen SDGs. Life Below Water (SDG 14) and Life on Land (SDG 15), obviously. The equity clauses tie it to Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions (SDG 16) and Reduced Inequalities (SDG 10). Less obviously, they tie it to No Poverty (SDG 1) and Zero Hunger (SDG 2), because conservation done badly strips communities of their land, their food systems, their hunting and fishing grounds, and the livelihoods that depend on all three. And to Gender Equality (SDG 5), because in much of the world the people managing that land and those food systems day to day are women, so they are the first to lose when access goes.
Translating the Target 3 Guide
Twenty-six thousand words, November 2023 to January 2024, five reviewers. The work was complex, and incredibly rewarding. There were international treaties and conventions to stay consistent with, human rights language that already has its settled terminology, and glossaries that weren’t mine and that I had to check against, including UNTERM, the CBD’s, IUCN’s, FAO’s. Some passages had to be in official language, the wording of the decisions themselves; others had to read like a person talking, while keeping their full weight.
The first milestone was a working glossary for the Guide, 104 terms, sent for confirmation, because field terminology and international instrument terminology don’t always align, and both keep evolving. Some entries were field jargon, Protected Area Downgrading, Downsizing and Degazettement for one. Others were ordinary words that needed a decision. Transboundary, for instance: in the field people use transfrontalier, but the CBD and other conventions write transfrontière. I wanted to clear, before we started, that we would be using the official register. Transboundary came up again in the review, an expert proposing transfrontalier, and my answer was the same.
Then came the translation. I translate concepts and aspirations so that a technical end-product resonates with its audience. For the Target 3 Guide, this meant drawing on my experience — legal, NGO, humanitarian communication, human rights, biodiversity and conservation — making sure all aspects, including the recognition of indigenous rights, came through.
It also meant being properly read. Once the full translation was done, draft copies went out to the native French biodiversity experts on the relevant IUCN mailing list — WCPA people who would use the guide. They did both the SME and the proofreader’s jobs: phrasing, terminology, questions, insight and more. They read the same passages, and they didn’t always agree. I loved that. Divergence is often where the value lies. Also, one will catch what another passes over.
What I hadn’t expected was how they read. These were scientists and practitioners, and they read like linguists. One of them rewrote a sentence for its rhythm. They weighed phrasing and syntax as carefully as the conservation science, and every comment came back with a reason, often with an alternative, sometimes with a question. Nobody paid them for the care they took. For me, it was a pleasure I hadn’t had in this work before: being read, closely and generously, by people who knew the subject from the inside and cared about the French, and about the people the guide was written for, as much as I did.
Once, the correction went another way. There was a paragraph I thought I could carry into French more clearly than the English carried it, a restructuring of the kind good translators make without thinking. The answer was no. The text rests on an agreement of all the stakeholders, the rightsholders above all. The guide, like Target 3 itself, is consensus language, every clause argued by people who had to be able to live with it. A clearer sentence that isn’t the agreed sentence, even if it carries the intent without distortion.
Take “rightsholders.” The guide sets rightsholders beside stakeholders on purpose: Target 3 treats Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPCL) as people who hold rights over their territories (not as parties to be consulted). I had détenteurs de droits. A reviser I’d trust with anything said: make it ayants droit; in the field, that’s the term for communities holding customary rights to land. Another proposed titulaires de droits. Both good French. I made the change.
Then I dug, with the legal translator’s reflex of asking which legal system a word stands in. Strictly, says Dalloz, an ayant droit is someone who holds a right. But in legal French, it lives in héritiers et ayants droit in a will, the ayants droit of an insured person, the ayants droit of an author. Nearly every time, it means a right that came from someone else; the Juridictionnaire says that in practice it’s used as a synonym of ayant cause. “Rightsholder” in the human rights sense is the reverse. It’s a right you hold because of who you are.
Titulaires de droits was closer: it’s the UN human rights term, and IUCN’s own Spanish uses its cognate. But titulaire comes from titre, a right held by title, whereas détenir is simply to hold. For rights the guide treats as inherent, the correct verb is the one that doesn’t ask who granted them.
Détenteurs de droits is IUCN’s terme consacré, and the CBD’s own French. Decision 15/24, adopted the same day as the Framework, speaks of “les peuples autochtones et les communautés locales en tant que détenteurs de droits […] et les autres parties prenantes”, the pairing the guide relies on, in the official text.
There were other words. One expert found it plain odd to see dollars des États-Unis written out in full. He was right; you’d never see it like that in France. But it is how UN documents write it.
Another expert changed recenser to identifier. In a multilingual field environment and after years in an English-heavy world, identifier stops sounding like the calque it is. But identifier means to say what something is (identifier un champignon, an unidentified flying object), not to find or list it. François Lavallée devotes to identify a whole entry of Le traducteur encore plus averti. “Identify legal gaps” in a report is an inventory of a numerous thing. Recenser was the right word and it stayed in my sentence.
Sometimes a question had no answer yet, only more research.
So I went through the points raised, reconciled differing views where experts disagreed, kept the syntax fixes that were better than mine (several were), and folded it all into the final version.
By then the review had stopped being an ISO-mandated check and had become a collaboration. For a brain like mine, which does its best thinking in writing and on its own clock, it was one of the most efficient ways I’ve ever worked. I learned plenty from them. I also learned to test every linguistic change I’m offered against my own research, especially the ones I want to take.
There was rigor in it, and depth, obviously (these people know their subject), but the thing I keep coming back to is the grace. Which is fitting. Target 3 asks for conservation that is inclusive, equitable and effective; the review of its French was all three, in miniature. Underneath the percentages, Target 3 is about who gets a say in how a place is managed. Here, the people who would use the French had a say in the French.
On later WCPA reports I asked to work directly with the native French experts from the Target 3 Guide, whenever they were available. I still do.
Further reading
Thirty per cent of the planet, one long negotiated sentence, and a French version that five people who will use it took the trouble to read. That’s the part of Target 3 I got to hold.
- Read the Biodiversity Framework on the Convention on Biodiversity’s website, or check out UNEP’s page on the Framework.
- Read the French version of the T3 Guide, translated by Words We Trust: Guide pratique pour la mise en œuvre inclusive, équitable et efficace de la cible 3.
If you have environmental or humanitarian/development content that needs to exist in French, tell me about it.