Originally from Handbook on International Commercial Arbitration - Second Edition

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The very nature of the international aspects of international arbitration results in documents often being in one of several languages. It is convenient to refer to languages other than the language of the arbitration as “foreign” in the same manner that laws other than those of the seat (and sometimes also other than the proper law of the agreement) of the arbitration are “foreign.” Many practitioners and parties in international arbitration are conversant in more than one language but there will inevitably be differing standards of linguistic skill and, hence, differing understandings of a document. For this reason it is invariably sensible to have foreign language documents translated into a common language (invariably the language of the arbitration). If a party wants an additional translation into the mother tongue of the party, it can do so at its own expense.