Language Matters September 2011: 23 Languages in the European Union: A New Babel in Brussels?

 Dear Language Friends,

More than 50 languages in 47 European countries

There was a time when all humans spoke the same language.

Accordingto Genesis 11 in the Old Testament, a group of migrants decided tosettle in the land of Shinar, the modern-day Iraq, and to build a towerwith its top in the heavens to defy God and make their name known. God,however, scattered them all over the world to punish their hubris.

Sothey abandoned the city, which was called 'Babel', from the ancientHebrew balal, meaning jumble. This biblical story tries to give somekind of an explanation for the diversity of languages we have today.

Estimatesin the Cambridge Encyclopedia reveal that the number of livinglanguages in the world is between 3,000 and 10,000. Of those, more than50 languages and 100 dialects are spoken in the 47 countries of Europe.The European Union has as many as 23 official languages.

Thanks for reading.

The LingoStar Team

 The European Union – The Largest Employer for Translation in the World

Is Brussels, Belgium, the European Union's headquarters city, about to become the Babel of the modern world? It seems to be the case since ten new countries (Czech Republic, Estonia, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovenia, Slovak Republic) became members of the legislative body in 2004 and two more countries (Bulgaria, Rumania) became members in 2007.

Even before its largest expansion in 2004 the EU was the largest employer for translation and ran twice as many operations as the United Nations with six official languages. Croatia, Serbia and Turkey are still on the waiting list to be admitted into the EU, so surely more languages will have to be accommodated into the EU within the next few years. Moreover, several regional groups in different countries hope that their language will be officially recognized, which would add to the amount of translation and interpretation work in the EU. This applies to Catalan, Irish and Welsh for example. According to the European Commission's Translation Director, General Juhani Lönnroth, there is a "proliferation of languages, while there is a "reduction of those actually in use".

 EU Institutions Overburdened by Multilingualism

Of course, English is steadily gaining ground as it is more widely spoken as a second language than any other. In 2008, 72% of EU documents were originally composed in English, 12% in French and 3% in German. Almost 100% of the Union's linguistic needs would be covered if documents were only translated into English, French, German, Spanish and Italian. However, it would be a delicate subject to reduce the number of languages in the EU. All EU citizens have the right to address the European institutions in their official language even if they come from a small country such as Malta with a very limited number of speakers. Due to the EU's multilingualism policy, all official languages have equal status, which is unique in the world. Translation is part of democracy and transparency in the EU even though it is selective: all pieces of legislation and policy documents of major public importance have to be translated into all 27 official languages, while internal documents have to be written in English, French and German and incoming documents from any language have to be translated into one of these three languages so that they are widely understood within the Commission.

Nevertheless, the language services workload in the EU is enormous. There is already a trend to reduce the average length of a Commission document from 37 to 15 pages to make sure that translation is better and more effective. Still many people fear that the EU institutions are overburdened by multilingualism. Not only do the official institutions require translated documents, but also all the associated lobbying companies and consultancies. In 2007, around 1 billion Euros were spent on translation and interpreting by the EU institutions, which is around 1% of the EU budget. The costs have been rising continuously since then and the EU language policy has become increasingly controversial; the tower keeps rising.

 Our Translation Service for European Languages

At LingoStar we translate documents between English and all the languages used in the European Union.You can rely on us for not only French, German, Spanish and Italian but also for the relatively new EU languages such as Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian, Slovak, Polish, Czech and others. In the localization world, the major European languages are referred to as FIGS (French, Italian, German, and Spanish) and they are the first set of languages that companies usually decide to localize their products and services into. These days, FIGS might not be sufficient so LingoStar is proud to offer localization services in all the Central and Eastern European languages as well.