EU translation service on the brink of collapse
SHARON SPITERI
26.05.2004 @ 09:28 CET
The increase in EU official languages from 11 to 20 following EU enlargement is proving to be a headache for the translation services of the EU who are increasing their backlog of work by 3,000 pages a week, Ansa reports.
The considerable delay in translation means there is a risk of the system collapsing as translators find they are unable to cope with the amount of increased work.
Commission vice-president Neil Kinnock has reportedly proposed to his colleagues that, in the future, a substantial part of the official documents will not be translated into all EU official languages but instead these texts will be available in all the languages in the form of a summary of around 15 pages.
Under this proposal, while the majority of documents will be in their complete form in the EU's working languages, English or French, only a translated summary will be available in all the other EU languages.
The first reduced texts are likely to arrive on EU officials' desks from 9 June, Ansa said.
Commission's measures
However, responding to questions posed by journalists, the European Commission said that under measures adopted today, texts it is legally bound to produce, such as directives and merger decisions will continue to be published in all EU languages.
But it is requesting its services to produce shorter documents, whereby communications and explanatory texts should not exceed 15 pages.
The Commission said that the current translation backlog amounts to some 60,000 pages, and that without action, the backlog would rise over the next three years to 300,000 pages.
