Translating is EU's new boom industry

[P. Kerim Friedman]

http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/
europe/3604069.stm

Translating is EU's new boom industry

By Angus Roxburgh BBC News Online, Brussels

When 10 new countries join the European Union on 1 May, they bring with
them an extra nine languages to add to the EU's existing 11.

There could even be 10 new tongues, for if Greek and Turkish Cypriots
vote for reunification before then, Turkish will become the EU's 21st
language.

How will it cope? Even with 20, Europe's tower of Babel is creaking.

Twenty languages gives a total of 190 possible combinations
(English-German, French-Czech, Finnish-Portuguese, etc), and finding
any human being who speaks, for example, both Greek and Estonian or
Slovene and Lithuanian is well-nigh impossible.

To get round this problem, the parliament will use much more "relay
translation", where a speech is interpreted first into one language and
then into another - and perhaps into a fourth or fifth.

Clearly the scope for mistakes in this game of Chinese whispers is huge.

"If I'm first in the chain, and make a mistake, then everyone else down
the relay makes the same mistake - or worse," Jana Jalvi, one of the
new Estonian recruits says.

The need for translation already takes away the cut and thrust of a
normal parliamentary debate.

When the Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, last year likened a
German MEP to a Nazi camp guard, it took several seconds before the
German realised he was being insulted and pulled off his headphones in
disgust.

But the rule is that every language must be provided.

"The European Parliament is the one place you can't expect people to
speak a foreign language," Patrick Twidle, who is in charge of
recruiting new interpreters, says.

"People are elected not because of their language skills but to
represent their political constituency."

The European Commission already has 1,300 translators, who process 1.5
million pages a year in the EU's 11 languages.

In two years that is expected to rise to almost 2.5 million pages - and
the staff, based in two enormous buildings in Brussels and Luxembourg,
will almost double in size to cope with the output.

The cost will rise from roughly 550 million euros today to over 800
million euros after enlargement.

Is it worth it?

Juhani Lonnroth, the Finn who runs the translation service, has done
his sums.

"Translation costs less than 2 euros per citizen, so it is less than a
cup of coffee or a ticket to the cinema," he says.

"I think it's worth it because it is part of democracy."

French competition

MEPs nonetheless last week debated whether it might not make sense to
have just one official language for the EU.

An Italian MEP, Gianfranco Dell'Alba, wondered if all MEPs should have
to learn a neutral language like Esperanto.

The obvious choice, in fact, would be English, which is more widely
spoken as a second language than any other.

But the French - who have the parliament on their soil and who, after
all, were founder-members of the EU - were outraged by the very
suggestion.

They are already miffed at the slow easing-out of their language as the
chief means of communication in the European Commission, where English
is steadily gaining ground.

EU commissioners from the new member states are being offered a free
crash course at a chateau in the south of France, while lower-level
civil servants will get free French lessons in Brussels.

Over 1,000 have already availed themselves of the opportunity.

Meanwhile, translating has become the EU's biggest boom industry.

It is not just the official institutions that require documents in
their own languages, but all the associated lobbying companies and
consultancies.

Builders have been constructing new cabins for the interpreters in all
the meeting rooms of the European parliament - in Brussels and in
Strasbourg.

Electronics suppliers are cashing in on the demand for more
sophisticated mixing desks to make sure the correct language gets
channelled to each set of headphones in the enormous chamber -
including those provided for members of the public.

More booths?

"It's very exciting," says Mari-Liis Aroella, an Estonian interpreter.

"We've been waiting so long for this moment, and finally it's
happening."

She looks exhausted after two hours of intense concentration during a
practice session, simultaneously translating a debate about the future
EU constitution, full of expressions that most citizens would be hard
put to understand in their own language.

And they are planning for an even grander future.

There are already 27 interpretation booths ranged around the
parliamentary debating chamber, for soon there will be Romanian and
Bulgarian - not to mention perhaps Croatian and Macedonian.

The tower grows and grows.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/3604069.stm

Published: 2004/04/08 01:55:37 GMT

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