Translating ESG and Sustainability Reports (CSRD)

The translation of ESG and sustainability reports has become a strategic matter for finance and CSR departments. With the CSRD directive and the ESRS standards, sustainability reporting is extending to many companies, and its multilingual distribution demands a precise and consistent terminology. Here is what a company in Belgium should know before launching a translation project.

CSRD and ESRS: broader sustainability reporting

The CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive) extends the sustainability reporting obligation to a far wider range of companies than before, building on the European ESRS (European Sustainability Reporting Standards). In practice, the sustainability information is most often integrated into the management report rather than published as a standalone document, which calls for strong consistency with the rest of the company's financial communication.

For multinational groups and their Belgian subsidiaries, this information frequently has to circulate in several languages. Translation is therefore not a mere formality: it determines how readable the information is for investors, authorities and all stakeholders.

Why translate an ESG report?

Several situations make translation necessary. Multilingual groups have to consolidate and distribute consistent information between the parent company and their subsidiaries. Investors and stakeholders expect a document they can understand in their working language. In Belgium, the combined need for French, Dutch and English is particularly frequent, whether for regulatory, commercial or governance reasons.

On top of this comes the reputational dimension: a sustainability report is a public document that is read and compared. An approximate translation can undermine the credibility of the CSR approach and create discrepancies in meaning with the original version.

The challenges of ESG and financial terminology

The main challenge of a CSRD report is the precision and consistency of the terminology. The vocabulary blends financial concepts with highly specific sustainability notions:

• EU taxonomy: the classification of sustainable economic activities, where each term has a regulatory definition that must be respected.
• Double materiality: taking into account both the company's impact on the environment and the impact of sustainability issues on the company.
• GHG and scopes: greenhouse gas emissions split into scopes 1, 2 and 3, whose translation must remain strictly aligned with the recognised conventions.

These terms allow no approximation: the same notion must be rendered identically throughout the report, and ideally from one year to the next.

Consistency, confidentiality and deadlines

Three operational constraints frame this type of project. First, consistency with the annual report: as the sustainability information is integrated into the management report, its translation must match the figures and vocabulary of the financial section. Next, confidentiality: before publication, a report contains sensitive data that has not been disclosed to the market, which calls for a strict handling framework. Finally, tight deadlines: translation often takes place during the closing period, when the source text is finalised late.

For companies, these challenges echo those of other sensitive corporate documents, such as the legal translation of B2B contracts or the translation of company articles of association.

Best practices for a successful project

A few methods help secure the quality and the deadlines of a multilingual ESG report:

• Build a glossary in advance, validated by the finance and CSR teams, covering the key ESRS and taxonomy terms.
• Use a translation memory to guarantee consistency between chapters and from one edition to the next.
• Plan for proofreading by a specialist in finance and sustainability, separate from the translator.
• Anticipate the closing calendar and set delivery milestones suited to internal reviews.