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Ran into this:

The exploitation of human beings in any form, particularly sexual, especially when applied to children, conflicts with the fundamental aims of tourism and is the negation of tourism; as such, in accordance with international law, it should be energetically combatted with the cooperation of all the States concerned and penalized without concession by the national legislation of both the countries visited and the countries of the perpetrators of these acts, even when they are carried out abroad;

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Does it equal "according to"?

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    It's not according to. Read concession as mercy in this context (definition #1 here - the act of yielding or conceding). It means people who exploit others - especially those who sexually exploit children - should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law by both countries. No "mitigating circumstances" or other concessions should be permitted which might reduce the severity of the punishment.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Aug 18, 2014 at 23:09
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    @FumbleFingers a fantastic answer!I understand I had analyzed the sentence wrongly. "they should be penalized without concession":) thx. Why don't you write an answer for it below?
    – Juya
    Commented Aug 18, 2014 at 23:47
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    It's a very long and complex sentence, and I'm not sure I endorse the phrasing at all. It's only a fragment, so perhaps somewhere earlier they justified that conflicts. But in the sentence as given, it appears to me the fundamental aims of tourism are an irrelevancy that just muddle things up even more.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Aug 19, 2014 at 0:24
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    A crazy man wrote that sentence. The rationale for penalizing sexual exploitation of children is that sexual exploitation conflicts with the fundamental aims of tourism????? Endowed by their Creator with frequent-flyer miles.
    – TimR
    Commented Sep 13, 2014 at 22:15

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"Without concession by" does not mean "according to".

The most likely interpretation (as pointed out by FumbleFingers in comments) of the (ridiculously long and complex) sentence is that:

Exploitation (...) should be penalized-without-concession by the national legislation.

Here we see that "without concession by" is not actually a phrase. "By" is a preposition connecting the verb-phrase "penalized-without-concession" to it's subject, the "national legislation" (an awful noun meaning in this context the body that enacts penalisation, rather than the written laws that "legislation" would normally mean).

And the phrase "without concession" means "without reducing the penalisation for any reason - without conceeding that there might be a reason to reduce it"

Another different interpretation of the sentence (my initial interpretation) is that the sentence was trying to sat that the "State concerned" should prosecute and penalize exploitation even if the national legislation in the visited country allows exploitation, and hence would allow concession. The States concerned should not "make concessions to" the national legislation, nor allow concessions by the national legislature, they should stick to their own position and prosecute to the full force being proposed. In this interpretation, the State is doing the penalisation, and the direction of the statement is that the State should not allow concession by the national legislation.

Both interpretations are similar in that the phrase "without concession" is telling us that no matter who is doing the penalization, it should be to the full extent possible.

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  • I don't think this is quite right. The author isn't implying that "national legislatures" are inclined to make concessions, and that this is a tendency "the States" concerned should strive to overcome. It just says countries should use the powers of their legislatures to impose [the maximum] penalties on transgressors (making no concession to appeals for clemency for any reason).
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Aug 19, 2014 at 16:39
  • Hah - here is one of those "time flies like an arrow" situations. The question is whether the penalizing is being done by the national legislature or is being done by the states, and whether the concession describes the penalisation! One possible meaning is that the national legislatures should penalize without concession. The other possible meaning is that the states should be penalizing without concession by the national legislature. Upon re-reading, I think your meaning is better than mine, because mine might call for another comma. I'll try to figure this into my answer...
    – GreenAsJade
    Commented Aug 20, 2014 at 1:04

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