You are in:
- Archives » 2006 » December 2006
Language Gap
If you had one country that spoke one language, that would be OK, or at least, simple. If you have a union of 25 (soon to be 27) nations, speaking in different tongues, you have a bit of a problem.
It has been an open secret for more than a generation that the parlance of politics in the corridors of the European Commission in Brussels has been conducted in the English language.
When there were six members of what was then known as the European Economic Community in the 1960s, the lingua franca was French.
Now, there is a big language headache. The tally of official languages rises from 20 to 23 on January 1st, 2007. This includes famous dialects such as Romanian, Bulgarian and Irish.
The Welsh want a piece of the action too. They are lobbying London and Brussels to have the same polyglot deal.
In the long-known tradition of Brussels, the so-called capital of Europe, nothing is ever full-frontal. So, a behind-the-scenes, back-door solution has evolved. Don't even whisper it.
The result is that up to two-thirds of documents and translations are drafted in English. The other bits are in French and German.
When you think about it, it is a plausible nightmare to find even enough translators to re-organise Latvian to Swedish to Spanish to Finnish.
As The Economist has noted correctly, we have a European Union of many languages, but, in the end, there is only one.
