What it is
A preamble is not free prose that happens to precede the enacting terms. It is a sequence of slots, each opened by a fixed wording: the legal basis, the proposal and the opinions gathered on the way, the procedure followed, then the numbered reasons. The opener of each slot is the same across acts of the same kind, and only what sits inside the slot is written for the act at hand.
This is the clearest case in the section of a whole text part being formulaic rather than a phrase inside one. A recital is composed; the frame it sits in is not, and neither is the order the slots come in. What a reader takes from a preamble is partly the reasons and partly that order, because the order records how the act came about.
The neighbour to hold apart is performative-and-enacting-formulae. The preamble runs up to the line that enacts and stops there. That line performs the act and belongs to the neighbour; everything above it prepares the act and belongs here. The boundary earns its place because provisions are counted from below it: a preamble allowed to swallow the enacting line shifts what a cross-reference resolves to.
Where the fixity comes from
Three layers, and only the middle one is this record's.
Guideline 9 of the Joint Practical Guide states what the citations are for: they set out the legal basis of the act and the main steps in the procedure leading to its adoption. Guideline 10 states what the recitals are for: concise reasons for the chief provisions of the enacting terms, without normative provisions or political exhortations. Neither guideline supplies an opener.
The openers are in the language versions, and each version prints its own. They change when the act's legal order changes how it drafts, which is not something a translator can anticipate.
Numbering, capitalization and the punctuation that closes a recital are notation rather than wording, and they belong to conventions rather than here. Two are cited below because they are visible in the same passages: the capital on the opener, which English and Dutch take and French and German do not, and the comma closing the last recital.
Consequences for translation
- The openers are found in the target version and not derived from the source. Composing one from the source produces a wording no version prints.
- The sequence is information. Merging citations, reordering them or moving a recital changes what the act says about its own making, and none of it is stylistic.
- A recital drafted as though it obliged claims force it does not have. The reasons carry no normative content, so a rendering that turns one into an instruction misstates the act, and a reviser can flag it.
- The empty approximation tier is this record's claim rather than an omission. A preamble outside its own instrument is reported text. An informative translation of a foreign act quotes reasons; it prefaces nothing, and the openers have no work left to approximate.
Examples
EN>FR
- Source: Having regard to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, and in particular Article 21(2) thereof, ... Whereas:
- Target: vu le traité sur le fonctionnement de l'Union européenne, et notamment son article 21, paragraphe 2, ... considérant ce qui suit:
- Comment: Regulation (EU) 2016/1191, preamble, English and French versions. Two things differ and only one is wording. The opener is fixed on each side, Having regard to against vu; the capital is not wording but a conventions fact cited here, and a reviser logging the lower-case French as an error has claimed the wrong warrant.
EN>NL
- Source: Having regard to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, and in particular Article 21(2) thereof, ... Whereas:
- Target: Gezien het Verdrag betreffende de werking van de Europese Unie, en met name artikel 21, lid 2, ... Overwegende hetgeen volgt:
- Comment: Same preamble. Dutch takes the capital where French does not, and so does the German version at gestützt auf and in Erwägung nachstehender Gründe:, which puts the count at two against two and rules out any general rule about the capital. The second conventions fact sits at the other end: recital (57), the last one, closes on a comma where the sentence before it in that same recital closes on a full stop, and the enacting line follows.
References
- Joint Practical Guide of the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission for persons involved in the drafting of European Union legislation, 2015 edition. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. Guidelines 9 and 10, at pp. 26 and 31.
- Regulation (EU) 2016/1191 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 6 July 2016 on promoting the free movement of citizens by simplifying the requirements for presenting certain public documents in the European Union and amending Regulation (EU) No 1024/2012, preamble and recital 57, English, French, Dutch and German language versions.