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Common Sense Advisory Blogs
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Commission to shed 'old Europe' translation staff
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French, German and English are "working" languages of the European Commission, meaning that all internal documents as well as E.U. legislation must be issued in those tongues. The other 18 E.U. languages have "official" status, meaning that only E.U. legislation must be translated into them. Given limited budgets, the languages of old Europe must give way to the new ("Old Europe" was a term "popularized" 2 years ago by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld when he failed to bring France and Germany into the Coalition of the Willing).
To meet its targets, the E.U. has a massive translation organization that consumes over 1 billion euros a year among translators, interpreters, and independent vendors. The Commission predicts it will have to translate 1,710,000 pages of literature next year, and pressure has increased due to the proliferation of internet pages that require translation.
The E.U. will reduce staff mostly for Italian and Spanish (but also in German and French). Although Italians are upset at the treatment given to their "old" language (after all, Italy was one of the six original founders of the European Community), this cut will not affect the ordinary citizen who tends to think that the European institutions are an expensive luxury that eats into their paychecks through elevated taxes.
In other news, the European Commission announced that it was committing itself to greater investment in language research by unveiling a communication on multilingualism. The Commission said that it will stimulate member states to promote multilingualism and improve language education. Even though these actions may seem contradictory, it is clear that one deals with budgetary issues and is driven by pragmatism, while the other sets policy and is driven national pride and politics.
In great European style, while the E.U. Commissioner for Training, Culture, and Multilingualism announced his policies, staff from the Directorate-General for Translation (DGT) gathered in the same building to protest against being moved out of their building in Brussels.
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Keywords: Translation |
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