Charlesp (asker) Jun 10, 2013:

Thomas Thanks Thomas for your long note and useful commentary.
I agree!

Thomas Johansson Jun 10, 2013:

By the way, the Swedish "nationella målen" (and most uses of the word "nationell" in EU discourse, actually) sounds JUST AS strange and clumsy in Swedish as "national" will do here in the English. We would normally not use the word "nationell" in this sense. This usage was introduced due to EU discourse and as the result of adapting the Swedish language to EU discourse: a term corresponding to the EU "national" (i.e. the corresponding French, Spanish, English, German etc. cousins of this word) was needed and, by calquing, the word "nationell" was the obvious candidate.
In general, when doing EU discourse, the translation will often need to sound somewhat unnatural, just as when doing legal texts, philosophy or many other specialized areas.

George Hopkins Jun 10, 2013:

Re objectives: If it fits the context, 'The aims, derived from national goals and interests).

Charlesp (asker) Jun 10, 2013:

Thanks Richard Yes, "domestic" is better (and perhaps more clearly understood).
However EU terminology uses "national" - and so my conclusion, at this point, is that the term "national" has to be used.

Thomas Johansson Jun 10, 2013:

I think "proceedings" is a possible interpretation here - as far as I can, the word could mean either that or "goal".
However, I believe the word "national" is generally preferred in EU contexts and there is a sort of one-to-one correspondence between English "national" and Swedish "nationell" in EU discourse, so I would probably keep that. It's likely that the term "nationell" will appear several times in the document or related documents and usually in distinction to "EU level".

Richard Green Jun 10, 2013:

I think "domestic proceedings" sounds fine. Hi Charles,
At first glance, I think "domestic proceedings" is a nice way of translating this. I'm not a legal specialist, however, so others may think otherwise.