introduction to the european union. the european union foundation purpose

Introduction to the European Union

The European Union

• Foundation

• Purpose

EU Institutions

• European Commission• European Parliament• European Council• Council of the European Union• Court of Justice• European Court of Auditors• European Ombudsman• European Data Protection Supervisor

EU Bodies and Agencies

• Financial bodies– European Central Bank– European Investment Bank

• Advisory bodies– European Economic and Social Committee– Commission of the Regions

• Community agencies– currently 24, including the Translation Centre for

the Bodies of the European Union (CdT)

• Common Foreign and Security Policy agencies - currently 3

Multilingualism in the EU

• Equal status for all official languages• Legislation: language versions equally

valid, ‘equally authentic’• All citizens have right of access to the

institutions: – ‘may write […] in one of the languages […]

and have an answer in the same language (Art. 21, EC Treaty)

• EU Language charter– Council Regulation No. 1

Languages

• Official languages vs. languages spoken in EU member states

• ‘Procedural’ vs. ‘non-procedural’ languages – internal business in EN, FR, DE

DGT

• Directorate-General for Translation of the European Commission– department for each official language (unit for

Irish) organized in 3 Translation Directorates• Transversal Linguistic Services Directorate

– specialist areas: web translation, editing

• Resources Directorate– staffing, IT, finance infrastructure, training

• Translation Strategy and Multilingualism Directorate– workflow and policy issues, external translation

DGT employment

• 1,750 translators, 600 support staff (2007)– largest translation company in world– TL plus 2 SLs– Current need for English language translators

• External translators– call for tender– over 20% done by freelance translators (2007)

DGT translation volumes

• 1.8 million pages (2008)– 72.5% from English– 11.8% from French– 2.7% from German– 13% from other languages– Main target languages: en, fr, de

Workflow (1)

• Poetry = interface for submitting translation request, ST and supporting docs to DGT

• Suivi = system for managing translation requests within DGT

• Dossier Manager = interface for translators to access job, collaborate on job

Workflow (2)

• DGTVista = archiving system, all STs and translations since 1994– rapid search– bilingual scrolling

• EUR-Lex = database of Official Journal of European Union (all legislation, treaties, etc.) – eur-lex.europa.eu

Workflow (4)

• Euramis– European Advanced Multilingual Information

System– central translation memory, since 1997– 84 million translation units/phrases

• SDL Trados Translator’s Workbench (TWB)– used to access Euramis translation memory– integrated with Microsoft Word

• Euramis alignment tool

Euramis alignment

Workflow (5)

• European Commission Machine Translation (ECMT) – automatic translation system, since 1976,

Systran– 860,314 pages translated by MT (2005); 40%

requested by DGT– not all languages handled– select specialised dictionaries or domains to

improve quality of output– MT accessible via Euramis interface or mailbox– MT output is post-edited

Other tools

• Speech recognition– used by approx. 300 translators– Dragon’s Naturally Speaking: for

dictating translation– only available for 9 EU languages

Further reading

Translation Tools and Workflow (European Commission)

http://issuu.com/edj2010/docs/tools_and_workflow_en

EU TASK

• Imagine you are employed at the EU as a policy officer. You have been given the task of reviewing the EU’s language/translation policy. Your first step will be to investigate the foundational legal basis of language policy, and how the situation has evolved. Write an introductory paragraph for your report.

EU Task: useful resources

• http://eur-lex.europa.eu/en/index.htm

• EEC Council: Regulation no. 1 determining the languages to be used by the European Economic Community

UN Task

• Imagine you are employed at the UN as a policy officer. You have been given the task of reviewing the UN’s language policy, specifically on multilingualism. Your first step will be to describe the current situation regarding the policy and its implementation. Write an introductory paragraph for your report.

UN task: Useful resource

http://www.un.org/en/documents/ods/Official Document System UN