Translating the International Convention on Racial Discrimination into Australian law

This paper considers the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth) (‘the RDA’) and its genesis in the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination of 1965 (‘ICERD’) as an example of the translation of international human rights standards into national legal systems. The idea of translation draws attention to the complex process of moving from one system of language, meaning and reference to another. How are international norms, typically cast in general terms, adapted into a national legal system? Scholars have identified two different approaches to translation: the first celebrates faithfulness to the original text and accuracy of meaning, while the second emphasises the creative and adaptive possibilities of translation.2 Both these approaches are implicated in debates about the relationship between the RDA and the ICERD.