Translations of the Madrid-New Delhi Document “Approaches for the Conservation of Twentieth-Century Cultural Heritage”

Heritage places of the 20th century pose some unusual challenges and they often require specific knowledge and techniques. These challenges and techniques are the subject of the document “Approaches for the Conservation of Twentieth-Century Cultural Heritage” that has been produced by the International Scientific Committee on Twentieth-Century Heritage (ISC20C) of ICOMOS. Based on the earlier Madrid Document that addressed twentieth-century architecture and adopted by ICOMOS in its General Meeting in New Delhi in 2017, it is known as the Madrid-New Delhi Document.

The original document is in English but in view of the global nature and relevance of its topic it has always been desirable to make the document’s message available to many people of different cultures and nations in their own language. With postgraduate students from all continents in its Heritage-related Master programmes, BTU was uniquely qualified to produce a wide range of translations. This became the topic of a study project in 2018 run by Leo Schmidt and Katelyn Williams. Based on a detailed and joint discussion and analysis of the original document, students from many countries then developed translations into their mother tongue. In this task they were each supported by a heritage expert from their own country and language, ideally a member of ICOMOS and ISC20C. Additionally, some further translations – notably into French, Italian and Spanish – were produced by other ICOMOS members.

Due to the involvement of supervising experts, the following translations may be regarded as authorised:

Arabic
Armenian
Danish
French
German
Italian
Mandarin
Marathi
Portuguese
Slovenian
Spanish
Swahili

The following translations, whilst no doubt equally qualified, should technically be understood as provisional since they still require authorisation by an ICOMOS expert. They are offered here for information purposes.

Bangla
Farsi
Finnish
Hindi
Macedonian
Russian