Concern that parts of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) document would be lost in translation were raised by opposition party legislators yesterday, saying the trade pact lacked an official English translation.
Semi-official agencies from Taiwan and China signed the landmark trade agreement on June 29, lowering cross-strait customs barriers and trade tariffs. Negotiators signed two copies of the agreement — one in traditional and the other in simplified Chinese characters.
Under WTO regulations, both sides must submit an English copy to the world trade body within a “reasonable period of time.”
“Because Taiwan and China did not sign an English version of the ECFA, we are concerned that our report to the WTO will not have a legal basis,” DPP Legislator Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲) said in the legislature yesterday
The opposition party has raised concerns about some of the translations of certain words that the government would use in the English version, including the name that would be used to designate Taiwan.
The country joined the WTO in 2001 under the name “Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu.” However, the WTO often refers to it as “Chinese Taipei.”
Kuan also said that as the agreement lacked an official translation, it remained unclear which version — the Taiwanese translation or the Chinese one — would eventually make its way to the WTO.
Provided the legislature passes the ECFA, the English-language version would have to be reviewed by the WTO to ensure compliance with rules and standards.
These concerns were dismissed by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers yesterday, who said the DPP caucus shouldn’t continue to use “a bunch of weird excuses” to delay passage of the ECFA in the legislature.
At a separate setting yesterday, Lai I-chung (賴怡忠), a researcher at Taiwan Thinktank, said the lack of an official English translation was modeled on the Closer Economic Partnership Agreement signed by Hong Kong and China in 2003, which was also signed entirely in Chinese.
Lai said previous free-trade agreements (FTA) signed by Taiwan — including the Taiwan-Panama FTA and the Taiwan-Nicaragua FTA — both included official English translations that were submitted to the WTO.
He said that the Ma administration’s willingness to sign the agreement using a nongovernmental organization, the Straits Exchange Foundation, set a dangerous precedent on how other trading partners would start referring to Taiwan.
Previous FTAs, which were signed under the administration of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), were carried under the country’s formal title, Republic of China, he said.
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