What it is
A proper name in a specialized text is not primarily a translation problem. It is a status problem, and four questions settle it. Does the body already have an official name in the target language? Will the name carry legal force in this text? Is the name descriptive, and therefore translatable, or essentially proper, and therefore not? And is the original form the one the reader will recognize?
Only the third is a linguistic question. The others are matters of fact about the body, the text and the readership, answered by looking things up rather than translating.
The standards side is thinner than the practice side here. ISO 704's fourth edition gives proper names a clause of their own and retitles the annex covering them, but the text is not public, so what a working reference can offer is the institutional rulebooks. Those are unusually good: the European Commission's style guide states the operative rules plainly, and the United Nations glossary for geographical names supplies a precise apparatus for converting names between scripts.
Where the authorities stand
The Commission's rules match the four questions. Where a body has an official English name, use it. In any text where the English will have legal force, use the body's official name, and where that name is in a non-Latin alphabet it is transliterated rather than translated. Where the name is descriptive, as a ministry's is, translate it, preferably with a commonly accepted or previously used term. Where it is essentially proper, as a company's is, leave the original form. Where the foreign name is the one the readership knows, or the one the body uses in its own English texts, use that. And never improvise an English abbreviation: give the English name with the original abbreviation in brackets at first mention, or the reverse.
Cite these by edition date rather than section number. The block has moved twice: in the 2011 edition it sat in a chapter on names and titles, in the 2016 and 2017 editions it ran from 5.6 to 5.11, and in the 2024 and 2025 editions it runs from 5.8 to 5.13.
For geographical names the United Nations glossary separates three operations that are constantly conflated. Conversion is the genus, the transfer of elements of a name between languages or scripts, effected by either transcription or transliteration. Transliteration works between scripts, character by character, aiming at complete reversibility. Transcription works from sounds, recording them in the target language's own script. Romanization is a direction-specific case, conversion into Roman script, and can be realized by either. The glossary's own worked line states what follows: an officially romanized form of a Russian name is not an exonym, and neither is a Pinyin form of a Chinese one, but the traditional English form of the latter is.
Consequences for translation
- Establish whether an official target-language name exists before anything else. Where it does, the job is retrieval, and any independent rendering is wrong however well formed.
- In a text with legal force the official name governs, even where a more transparent rendering exists and even where the body itself uses that rendering elsewhere. The two answers can differ for one body.
- Never coin an abbreviation. An improvised initialism is unfindable and untraceable back to the body.
- Transliteration, transcription and romanization are three operations with three outputs. Naming which one is required is part of the instruction.
- The title of a legal instrument is part of its identity. Drafting guidance treats it as an identifier that must distinguish the act from others, and requires references to indicate precisely the act referred to, so a rendered title that cannot be matched back breaks the reference.
Examples
PL>EN
- Source: Najwyższa Izba Kontroli
- Target: Supreme Audit Office
- Comment: The official English name, fixed by the body, and not the obvious rendering. The institution's own English pages record that its earlier English name was Supreme Chamber of Control, so a translator working from an older document will find a designation that is now wrong. The Polish abbreviation NIK is retained.
DE>EN
- Source: Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht
- Target: Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin)
- Comment: The abbreviation rule in its normal form. The authority's own English publications give the English name with the German abbreviation in brackets, exactly as the style guide prescribes. There is no English initialism, and inventing one would produce a string that appears nowhere.
EL>EN
- Source: Dimosia Epichirisi Ilektrismou AE (DEI)
- Target: Public Power Corporation SA (PPC)
- Comment: The status question deciding against the obvious answer. The company uses the English name and abbreviation throughout its own English-language material, so on the reader-recognition test that form wins. In a legal act it loses: the style guide requires the transliterated official name there. One body, two correct forms, and the text type decides.
References
- United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (2002). Glossary of Terms for the Standardization of Geographical Names. ST/ESA/STAT/SER.M/85. New York: United Nations, entries 005, 041, 076, 081, 223, 280, 346 and 352.
- ISO 704:2022. Terminology work: Principles and methods, 4th edition. Geneva: International Organization for Standardization, clause 7.4 and Annex C.
- European Commission, Directorate-General for Translation. English Style Guide: A handbook for authors and translators in the European Commission, edition of 21 November 2025, sections 5.8 to 5.13. Earlier editions consulted: 30 May 2024, 27 February 2017, 8 December 2016 and the seventh edition of June 2011.
- European Parliament, Council and Commission (2015). Joint Practical Guide for persons involved in the drafting of European Union legislation, 2nd edition. Luxembourg: Publications Office, guidelines 8 and 16.