In the Common Market, $760 Million in Translations Proves That Talk Isn’t Cheap

Talk isn’t cheap in the European Common Market. Officials say they will spend $760 million next year just for written and oral translations of the nine languages used in the 12-nation economic community.

Although only 2% of the Common Market’s budget, the translation budget far exceeds the $540 million planned for food aid in 1987 and exceeds by $35 million the amount set aside for research into new technologies.

This year, Spain and Portugal raised the Common Market’s membership to 12 nations and added Spanish and Portuguese to the English, German, Italian, French, Dutch, Danish and Greek already spoken.

The European Parliament, an arm of the Common Market, spent $150 million in 1986, nearly half its budget, to translate papers and interpret debates of its monthly plenary sessions in Strasbourg, France, and those of its committee meetings in Brussels.

Costly Translations

The Parliament uses more than 400 translators for documents and 440 interpreters for debates in Strasbourg and Brussels.

It costs $2.4 million a year to translate its 1,400 or so “motions for resolutions,” many of which are political statements that delegates throw away. The Executive Commission assigns 350 full-time interpreters to daily meetings in Brussels here and around the world and can dip into a reserve pool of several hundred free-lancers.

“In 1986 we logged almost 900,000 interpreter days,” said Marco Benedetti, an official at the commission’s interpretation division. “At times we could have 500 interpreters at 50 meetings all around the globe.”

He said a third of the 9,000 employees at the commission headquarters do linguistic work. The market’s Council of Ministers has a 2,000-member staff across the street and relies on the commission for interpreters, but it employs 720 translators on its own.

Numerous Languages

The Common Market started out with France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands and four languages--French, German, Italian and Dutch. The entry of Britain, Denmark and Ireland in 1973 added English and Danish. Greece joined in 1981.

When the Common Market had six languages, simultaneous interpretation at a meeting required 13 interpreters. “Today, 30 are needed for that same meeting,” said Benedetti. Last year, the Executive Commission warned that the growing number of tongues posed “serious administrative difficulties” but did not suggest any reduction in languages.

“Language is not merely a mechanical question,” it said. “It enshrines intellectual and cultural values which are part of the very fabric of European civilization. It is not part of the task of the community to destroy that variety.”

But the entry of Spain and Portugal, said Benedetti, has “created enormous difficulties” forcing the commission to increasingly resort to “relay” interpretation, whereby the spoken word is interpreted from one language to another in sequence, rather than simultaneously into all languages.

Computers May Help

Relay interpretation is now standard if all nine languages are required at a meeting of commission staffers, and increasingly frequent at meetings where fewer language combinations are needed. But one official said this practice of an interpreter interpreting another interpreter “multiplies the possibilities for confusion geometrically.”

At the commission and other community institutions most documents are still written and printed in all languages. The commission has begun experimenting with computer translations and is investing $30 million in a new computerized translating system.

The European Parliament is most protective of language rights. So jealous are parliamentarians of their right to speak in their own tongue, that recently they rejected a proposal to reduce the load of motions for resolutions. This would have saved an estimated $180,000 a year in printing costs alone.

Although the parliamentarians can speak in any Common Market language, they do so at their own risk. A West German member who recently used English on the floor was reprimanded by his government and told to stick to German in the future.