Babel in Brussels

“Multilingualism is a key element of the EU”, which “underlines cultural diversity and ensures the equal treatment of European citizens”, says ALEXANDER STUBB , Finnish MEP. Stubb is the author of the Report recently approved by the European Parliament in Strasbourg in response to that of the European Auditing Court on the costs of translation incurred by Commission, Parliament and Council. COMMUNICATION AND TRANSPARENCY. Rebutting the objections regarding the excessive costs of translation, Stubb replies that “the costs for translation and interpreting amount to only 1% of the total budget of the Union”. He therefore insists that “multilingualism guarantees the right of citizens to communicate with the institutions”, and “permits them to exercise their democratic control”. At the same time the language services “help to make “the EU institutions more transparent”. The parliamentary report, approved by a large majority, does not however ignore the costs of the service and underlines the need to “contain them within acceptable financial limits”. To this end, the Report suggests some guidelines for action, beginning with a better selection of the texts to be translated, a greater collaboration between the services of the various institutions and the reduction of the per-page cost, perhaps by outsourcing some services. MILLIONS OF PAGES TO BE TRANSLATED. The figures admittedly are staggering. With the entry of Romania and Bulgaria into the EU at the start of the year, the official languages have risen to 23. The more widely used languages are flanked by those that are used by very small minorities of citizens: e.g. Gaelic (Ireland) or Maltese. Especially following the great enlargement of EU frontiers to Eastern Europe in 2004, the volume of translations has been progressively growing, to the point of exceeding 1,300,000 pages per year just for the documents of the Commission (which comprises some 1,450 full-time translators), 1,080,000 for the EP (550 translators) and 475,000 pages for the Council (660 translators). Stubb himself admitted that the EU institutions have not yet calculated “the overall costs of translation (comprising the ancillary costs relating to translators, secretaries, directors, planning, real estate, information technology, and the management of human resources), or the per-page costs”. So the Report approved by the EP invites the three main institutions to “fix clear and comparable parameters for the costs”, so as to be able to determine with greater precision budgetary needs and also to eliminate possible wastage. It was the European Auditing Court that estimated that the overall cost for translation in 2005 was of the order of 257 million euros for the Commission, 128 million euros for the Parliament and 126 million for the Council. “During the same year the average cost per page – writes Stubb in his Report – totalled 196.3 euros”, but with significant disparities: 194 euros per page for the Commission, 119 for the Parliament and 276 for the Council. SIMULTANEOUS TRANSLATION FOR THE EP. The numbers relating to the interpreting service are also striking. To facilitate the legislative work of the Parliament, each MEP has the right to use his own mother tongue. That explains why some 350 permanent interpreters work between Brussels and Strasbourg, the two seats of the EP. And they are flanked by many freelance interpreters for the plenary assemblies and in periods of most work. The maxi-enlargement in 2004 multiplied the languages in use in the EP: since then it is possible to hear, at official meetings and in the corridors, people speaking Polish, Estonian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Hungarian, Czech, Maltese, Slovak and Slovenian. At the same time the “combinations” between the various languages have grown: they now approach 400. So in recent years the interpreters have adopted the system of “relais”, by which – explain the language services of the EP – a language is translated into another through a third intermediate language: e.g. Portuguese is translated into Estonian through the English or German language booth. ORBAN’S PROJECTS. Stubb is flanked, as the champion of the multilingual system that characterises the EU, by Commissioner LEONARD ORBAN . As soon as he took over his portfolio for multilingualism in January this year, the Romanian politician tried to define an EU strategy in this sector, establishing three priority spheres in which to promote multilingualism: economic competitiveness and the creation of jobs; intercultural dialogue; and the “promotion of opportunities for political dialogue through multilingual communication with citizens”. Orban has established a high level workgroup that will present its conclusions at the end of September. A ministerial Conference is scheduled for early 2008, followed by a document of the Commission able to define a series of EU measures for the promotion of multilingualism as a source of integration between the 27.