Adding Ten More Storeys to the EU’s Tower of Babel

Last month when the European Commission decided that accession talks would be completed with ten EU candidate countries, polyglots from north and south must have been rubbing their palms in anticipation of new job opportunities. The EU will indeed need lots of help from them since translators and interpreters are the lifeblood of the European Union.

A day in the life of the EU requires the services of 700 - 800 interpreters to work in and out of the 11 official languages. From January 1, 2004, when Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia join the EU, multilingual Europeans will have to accommodate the Union's 21 languages every day. Each new member state will need a contingent of 120 – 130 trained interpreters to fulfill its needs.

Real need

The EU’s policy of multilingualism means that each language is on equal footing.

"One day you may have a meeting in French, German, Hungarian, Estonian and Polish," Ian Andersen, a spokesman for the EU's Joint Interpreting and Conference Service (JICS), told DW-WORLD. JICS provides language skills to all EU institutions except the Court of Justice and the Parliament, which have their own interpreters.

In practice though, the EU functions on the "principle of real need rather than political need," Andersen explained.

To keep costs down the choice of languages is adjusted to the importance of the content and the intended audience. A real need doesn't arise with EU officials, for example, as they must speak at least one of the EU's three main languages, (English, French and German). Thus, some EU meetings and documents are just translated or interpreted into the three. When elected officials, such as members of the European Parliament, take part in meetings though, language professionals may need to help out.

Multilingualism = 2 euros per year

"Two euros per year is the cost of multilingualism," says Andersen. Those two euros per citizen per year make up the EU's yearly budget of 700 million euro for translation and interpretation.

Andersen says the addition of the ten new official languages will bring costs up by around 10 cents per citizen. Each new language will cost the same amount in real terms. Relatively though, Poland's language needs - with 38.6 million Polish speakers - will be cheaper than Estonia's (1.4 million speakers).

The number of languages interpreted at any one meeting, however, will stay constant. For JICS only meetings in which all 21 languages are interpreted will end up costing more.

Early start

Since 1990, JICS has been actively involved in training interpreters in potential candidate countries, including Bulgaria, Romania and Albania. The Multilingualism Department has been training trainers, offering teaching assistance, producing teaching materials, providing bursaries to students and subsidies to teaching establishments over the past three years. JICS also participates in final exams and conducts yearly tests for interpreters in the candidate countries.

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania pose a special problem because they don't have a long-standing tradition of interpreters training. The Service has a special office in Copenhagen to deal with the Baltics. Andersen, however, is confident that there will be enough Baltic language interpreters for the first meetings after enlargement.

So far, Andersen says, JICS has 340 freelancers from the candidate countries on the books. The highest number works with Polish (60), the lowest with Romanian (15), besides 20-30 more for each of the other languages soon to join the EU's Tower of Babel.

The space issue

Space is also a problem. Currently one-to-one translation of all official languages requires 33 interpreters and 11 aquariums, as practitioners call the glass booths where they do their work.

By January 1, 2004 only four EU meeting rooms will be equipped with the necessary 21 aquariums needed. The JICS will only be able to provide full coverage for four meetings a day. "It'll be enough for the beginning," says Andersen.

Supply and demand

While the EU's three main languages require 70 – 80 interpreters on a daily basis, only 40 will be needed per new language per day as they won't be used for central communications.

Still, both the interpreting and translating services have had to lower their requirements to be sure to have enough extra hands in time for enlargement.

Although German interpreters, for example are required to be able to work with three languages on top of their mother tongue, applicants from the new candidate countries must merely be able to interpret between their native language and one other language.

Not all sorted

Translating is an entirely different issue and a field that - as opposed to interpretation - is decentralized in the EU: Each institution has its own translators. Just to serve the EU's institutions, each country needs a contingent of at least 80 translators.

According to Claude Mazet, of the Translation Center for the Bodies of the EU, it is not yet clear how enlargement will effect the Center. Mazet points out that it depends largely on the needs of the agencies and institutions.

For instance, the Agency for the Evaluation of Medical Products and the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Markets – trademarks and design in realspeak - will need practically every document translated into all official languages. The offices responsible for training and social affairs, on the other hand, will require less translation, Mazet reckons.

Going back to the Baltic issue, Mazet attests that there is enough interest there. However, while 51 Poles have passed the EU exams for translators, hardly a dozen have managed in the Baltic states.

Still, the locally administered tests aren't the only source for translators. The EU advertises in the mass media in the candidate countries and also accepts blind applications. Thus, the Center has been able to compile reference lists of freelancer translators over the past two years.

There's no guarantee that preparations will meet the EU's needs. "We'll see if it works," Andersen concedes.

So for all you polyglots soon to possess a magenta Union passport: The starting wage for an EU interpreter is 3000 euro per month. Help wanted.