The Spanish language is celebrating. 20 years have passed since the first ISO international standards translation working group was created in this language.
These groups, known as STTF, were created so that all Spanish-speaking countries could have a single Spanish version of the ISO standards, agreed among Spanish-speaking countries involved in their translation.
The official languages of ISO standards are English, French and Russian. Having ISO global standards in Spanish makes it easy for all companies in Spanish-speaking countries to use, boosting international trade and exports of their products and services, to the benefit of more than 500 million Spanish speakers.
The first group, called ISO/TC 176/STTF, began in 1999. This group is responsible for translating quality management standards, such as ISO 9001, into Spanish. After this other groups were started ito have Spanish standards translated in new areas, such as the environment, the assessment of conformity, energy and innovation, effectively responding to the new needs of organisations.
Thanks to the work of these groups over these past two decades, there are currently 100 standards published by ISO in Spanish, essential to the competitiveness of companies: ISO 9001 Quality; ISO 14001 Environmental Management; ISO 45001 on Occupational Health and Safety; ISO 22000 Food Safety or ISO 37001 Anti-bribery, among others.
The group that coordinates all Spanish translation bodies is the ISO/TMBG/STMG "Spanish Translation Management Group," of which national standardisation bodies from 16 Spanish-speaking countries are part, together with COPANT:
- Argentina-IRAM
- Bolivia-IBNORCA
- Chile-INN
- Colombia-ICONTEC
- Costa Rica-INTECO
- Cuba-NC
- Spain-UNE
- Ecuador-INEN
- El Salvador-OSN
- Guatemala-COGUANOR
- Dominican Republic-INDOCAL
- Mexico-DGN
- Panama-COPANIT
- Paraguay-INTN
- Peru-INACAL
- Uruguay-UNIT
- COPANT (observer)
Similarly, organisations such as the OHN (Honduras) and the ANSI (USA), although not members of the STMG, are actively involved in specific STTF tasks, such as quality and the environment, as well as INLAC as the liaison organisation in ISO tasks.
With regard to the coordination and management of the group, the secretariat of the ISO/TMBG/STMG is carried out by the Spanish Association of Standardization, UNE.
