1
Established“In the case of divergence, the English text shall prevail” (Regulation 1, 16 May 2003). Every law the CPA issued for Iraqis was binding in its English text.
95legal texts in the CPA’s Arabic
29in the official gazette’s Arabic (Dorar al-Iraq)
198English versions of CPA legislation read
3of them mention occupation
The translator’s fingerprint
From “purging” to “uprooting”
Three voices, different words
2
EstablishedThe translator’s fingerprint: the CPA’s Arabic renders the basis of its authority as “the laws and customs followed in (a state of) war” (79 of 95 texts); the official gazette writes “the laws and customs of war” (24 of 29). Exceptions are few (5 and 3), so the formula alone nearly tells you who translated.
3
EstablishedThe policy’s name: “purging … of the Baath Party” in 12 texts in the CPA’s Arabic, “uprooting the Baath” in 3 in the gazette’s. The first “uprooting the Baath” in an Arabic text of the CPA’s own came late: 23 April 2004, in the translation of a Bremer address (TR-5486c1a4).
4
EstablishedOccupation: of 198 English versions of CPA legislation, only 3 orders use the language of military occupation. The original Order 17 (June 2003): “occupying powers… are not subject to the laws or jurisdiction of the occupied territory.” Order 13 (June 2003): military tribunals’ jurisdiction “under the law of war or law of occupation.” Their 2004 revisions (April for Order 13, June for Order 17) lack both phrases. The third, Order 48, mentions “occupied territory” in its definition of war crimes.
5
EstablishedCoalition or alliance? “al-I’tilaf” appears in 99% of the CPA’s Arabic legislation and 63% of its releases; “al-Tahaluf” in 8% and 30%. “Occupation” appears in 2% of the Arabic legislation, 9% of releases and briefings, and 58% of the UN’s Arabic documents.
6
Established“Unofficial translation”: so 62 Arabic files of CPA releases and briefings in the archive are labelled. No legal text carries the label, though Regulation 1 places all of its Arabic below the English.
7
Open questionWho translated for the CPA? The archive names no translator or office. And when the two Arabics differed, which did Iraqi judges read?
Method, confidence and limits
Texts: every Arabic version of the orders, regulations and memoranda in the archive: the CPA website’s versions (“the CPA’s Arabic”) and Dorar al-Iraq’s versions transcribed from the al-Waqa’i al-Iraqiya gazette (“the gazette’s Arabic”). An order with both is counted twice, once per source.
Normalisation: we strip diacritics and tatweel, write hamza forms as alif, ta marbuta as ha and alif maqsura as ya, then search with patterns stated in the table. Manual review: we read every passage that enters a published finding. We dropped, for example, “uprooting corruption” and “uprooting terrorists”, which are not the policy’s name, and the “occupation” of public buildings in Order 6, which is not military occupation.
Voices: legislation (sections 01–04), releases and briefings (05–06), and UN documents among the companion sources. Share = documents naming the term ÷ the voice’s documents with text in that language, after removing menus and headers repeated across the website’s pages (so the “Coalition Provisional Authority” masthead on every release is not counted).
Limits: some Arabic versions come from PDFs with scrambled word order, so a passage may be missed. The archive does not hold every gazette issue. The “occupation” share in releases includes reporters’ questions and guests’ words, not only the CPA’s.