Translating for the European Commission

Vilnius, 7 June 2013

Miroslav Adamiš

Director DGT

• - Language regime of the European institutions

• - Activities of the DGT

• - Commission’s role in the legislative process

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The legal basisTreaty on the Functioning of the European Union

• Citizens have a right to address the official EU bodies in any of the EU’s official languages and to receive a reply in that language.

Council Regulation No 1/58

• Regulations and other documentsof general application shall bedrafted in the official languages.

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Official languages and working languages of the European Union

Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish and Swedish.

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EU official languages over time

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Procedural languages

• - Article 6 of regulation 1/58 allows the EU institutions to stipulate in their rules of procedure which languages are to be used in specific cases.

• - The Commission decided to use English, French and German as procedural languages.

• - The documents have to be available in principle in DE, EN and FR for the meeting of Commissioners.

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Language of original documents (%)

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

English

French

GermanOthers

•

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Number of translated pages 2012by target language (%)

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Linguists in the EU

Council

Parliament

Court of Justice

Court of Auditors

Economic &Social Committee

Committee of the Regions

Translators: ± 4300

European Central Bank

Translation Centre

Interpreters: ± 1000

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DGT’s activities

• translate legislative documents• translate correspondence and other texts drafted by or

addressed to the Commission • translate websites• summarise long documents orally or in writing• edit Commission documents

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Quality assurance

• - legislative documents and documents intended for publication are revised

• - computer assisted translation

• - cooperation with national ministries and authorities

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DG Translation

Some 2500 translators and support staff

50% in Brussels

50% in Luxembourg

Field Offices in Member States

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1.76 million pages translated in 2012 Evolution in the number of translated pages 2000-2012

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Cost of multilingualism

• Translation and interpreting in all EU institutions put together cost each EU citizen just over 2 euros per year.

• The cost of multilingualism adds up to less than 1% of the annual EU budget.

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Translation contest for Europe’s budding linguistsWebsite: ec.europa.eu/translatores Facebook.com/translatoresTwitter: @translatores

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European Master’s in Translation

54 university programmesin Europe

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Recruitment competitionsfor EU officials

Publication:

• Official Journal of the European Union (C edition)

• EPSO (European Personnel Selection Office) website www.eu-careers.eu

Selection procedure: 5 to 9 months

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Recruitment criteria

You must be an EU citizen

You must hold a full university degree in languages or another field (minimum BA)

No professional experience is required

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EUR-Lex: free public access to EU law• eur-lex.europa.eu

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IATE: public multilingual term baseiate.europa.eu

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Acquis communautaire

• in form of a translation memory is freely available under the following link: http://ipsc.jrc.ec.europa.eu/index.php?id=197

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Ordinary legislative procedure

• Commission: initiator of new legislation

• documents translated first by the European Commission

• entails the need to create new terms

• collaboration with Lithuanian authorities is appreciated

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More information?

• Web: ec.europa.eu/dgs/translation

• Facebook.com/translatingforeurope

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Thank you for your attention!

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