Omnilingual Aspirations: The Case of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Abstract

Adopted by the United Nations in 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, the most widely translated document. However, versions in 419 languages are not conceived as translations but equivalences, alternate embodiments of identical tenets. The Bible has been rendered into numerous languages, but the Hebrew and Greek originals possess authority that English, Bengali, and Xhosa derivatives do not. The Bible is translated, but the UDHR is, through the theology of international governance, transubstantiated into multiple tongues. No version has priority; each is equally valid, transparent, and interchangeable. The utopian premise is not only that all humans possess inalienable rights but also that all languages express the same principles. The document’s title, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, might seem a solecism, a misplaced modifier. Surely, it is human rights that are universal, not the declaration. However, the UN insists that all versions (at least in the original official languages) are equally binding. It rejects Whorfian notions that particular languages enable particular thoughts and embraces languages as neutral tools whose specific manifestation is irrelevant. Arguments against imprisoning writers in Burma could appeal equally to the authority of either the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or la Déclaration universelle des droits de l’homme or Всеобщую декларацию прав человека or la Declaración Universal de Derechos Humanos or 世界人权宣言. Rather than the Babelian myth of an Ur-Sprache before hubris scattered us into mutual unintelligibility, the UDHR endorses a Chomskyan belief that all languages can express the same thoughts. Yet differences among versions of Article 1 (“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”) are not trivial; dignity is incommensurable with Würde, αξιοπρέπεια, dignidade, waardigheid, or достоинства. The UDHR is a translingual text shaped by the languages of framers and translators.