It is a fact that in general most of the preparatory work in the Technical Committees and working groups in CEN is in English. The underlying documentation and the preliminary drafts are in English. When publishing a draft standard (prEN), it is up to DIN (German NSB) and AFNOR (French NSB) to decide if they want to translate and provide CEN with a German or French version. The time schedules allow for 2 months to make this translation available. It is up to the so called National Standards Bodies (NSBs) to decide if other national language versions will be produced. This decision will only be taken if this is required by the users. If the user group is a small expert group of, for example, software developers this seems unlikely.  When the standard is referred to in a more general way by a bigger target group, translation should be considered by the NSB.

Question submitted by: Dick van Dijk (TNO, The Netherlands)
Anwered by: Dick van Dijk, TNO and Jaap Hogeling, ISSO (The Netherlands)
Date: 2008.03.10