What it is
A citation introduces an instrument and identifies it well enough for a reader to find it. It is not an argument and not a summary but a handle, and what matters about a handle is whether it fits the reader's shelf.
Every system that has one runs it in two forms. The first mention carries the full identification and later mentions a short form that leans on it. The systems agree on that much and disagree about where the identifying material lives, which is why a citation cannot be moved between them by translating its words.
The neighbour to hold apart is the record on reference and amendment formulae, along the line it already draws: a citation introduces an instrument and identifies it, a reference points inside one at a provision. Where a citation carries the name of a body, the term record keeps the name and this record the wording around it. Which elements a national gazette citation is made of, and in what order, is a conventions question, held there by gazette and act citation on three national instruments.
Where the fixity comes from
Neither system is law, and each binds only inside the house that issues it. That is the content of the Institutional value: the same deviation is a finding in one reader's hands and a preference in another's.
OSCOLA binds work that has adopted it and nothing else. Its fourth edition keeps the identification in the footnotes: 2.4.1 has an Act cited by short title and year in roman, capitals for the major words and no comma before the year; 1.2.1 has a subsequent citation identify the source briefly and add a cross-citation in brackets to the footnote holding the full one; 2.1.1 sets out the components of a case citation; and 2.6.1 requires EU legislation to be given its full name on first citation. An editorial board can renumber all four, which is why the edition belongs in any citation of the guide.
The European institutions run the other arrangement, with the identification inside the citation rather than in a note beneath it. This record quotes nothing from their style guide, because the official edition did not open and a convenient copy is not the text. What can be shown is what the guidance produces, read off the acts: an act number printed as a bracketed domain abbreviation, a four-digit year and a sequential number, and the elements of the full title standing at the head of the act in a settled order. They are observations of the acts and are offered as no more.
Consequences for translation
A citation is one of the few things in a text that is rebuilt rather than rendered.
- Two systems that agree on full-first and short-later still put the identifying material in different places, so translating a citation's words moves neither it nor the reader.
- A short form is usable only after a full form has appeared. Meeting the short form first means finding the full one, since a guessed expansion produces a title no instrument carries.
- The order of the elements belongs to the version. Where the author stands before the act type in one version and after it in another, a citation carried across unchanged names the author where the target never prints it.
- Outside the house whose guidance it is, nothing here is an error. For a project manager the client's stated style is the warrant, and where none is stated the instrument's own version is.
- Numbering and punctuation are settled among the conventions rather than here. The four-digit year, the sequential number and the absent comma before the year in OSCOLA are conventions facts cited here, not findings of this record.
Examples
EN>NL
- Source: COMMISSION IMPLEMENTING DECISION (EU) 2021/914 of 4 June 2021
- Target: UITVOERINGSBESLUIT (EU) 2021/914 VAN DE COMMISSIE van 4 juni 2021
- Comment: Implementing Decision (EU) 2021/914, heading of the act, English and Dutch versions. The author moves from the front of the title to a position after the act type and the number. A translator holding the English order would write Commissie-uitvoeringsbesluit, which is a name for the act and not how the act names itself.
EN>FR
- Source: COMMISSION IMPLEMENTING DECISION (EU) 2021/914 of 4 June 2021
- Target: DÉCISION D'EXÉCUTION (UE) 2021/914 DE LA COMMISSION du 4 juin 2021
- Comment: Same heading, French version. The author moves as it does in Dutch, and the domain abbreviation inside the number moves with the language: (EU) becomes (UE). The number is therefore not a stable string across versions, and a citation lifted from an English source is wrong in the element that looked safest to leave alone.
References
- Oxford University Standard for the Citation of Legal Authorities (OSCOLA), fourth edition. Oxford: Faculty of Law, University of Oxford, published by Hart Publishing, 2012. Rules 1.2.1, 2.1.1, 2.4.1 and 2.6.1.
- Interinstitutional Style Guide. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2022 edition. Cited by edition; no wording is taken from it on this page.
- Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2021/914 of 4 June 2021 on standard contractual clauses for the transfer of personal data to third countries pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council, heading of the act, English, French and Dutch language versions.