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EU Parliament readies to storm tower of Babel
Brussels, Oct 27: It has been described as a modern tower of Babel. The European Parliament will echo with up to 20 different languages when the EU expands next year, and each will be instantly translated into the others.
Brussels, Oct 27: It has been described as a modern tower of Babel. The European Parliament will echo with up to 20 different languages when the EU expands next year, and each will be instantly translated into the others.
The result is a possible 380 combinations of languages -- as elected representatives from Finland to Malta make laws that will affect the lives of some 450 million European Union citizens.
''There are no other international organisations that even dream about operating like this,'' said Patrick Twidle, the man in charge of preparing parliament's interpreting service for EU enlargement next May. What he called the ''big bang'' expansion of the EU will almost double the number of languages used in the assembly, requiring a major rethink of how the interpreting service operates.
Assuming all 10 accession countries, mostly in Eastern Europe, take up the invitation to join the 15 existing EU states, each will bring its own language.
The only exception is the divided island state of Cyprus, which, unless its Greek and Turkish sides unify, will use only Greek, already an EU tongue. Even the Mediterranean island state of Malta, a former British colony where most of the 400,000 inhabitants speak fluent English, will have its own language recognised. Romania and Bulgaria hope to enter the EU in 2007.
The reason Parliament has resisted going the United Nations path of selecting a handful of widely used working languages is the principle that anyone, not just the highly educated or linguistically gifted, has the right to sit in the assembly.
That exercise was fairly simple when the EU was in its infancy in the 1950s.
The EU's forerunners, the coal and steel community and the European economic community, had only six member states and four languages, meaning no more than 12 language combinations. The EEC's first enlargement to three new countries in 1973 added Danish and English to the list.
Bureau Report
''There are no other international organisations that even dream about operating like this,'' said Patrick Twidle, the man in charge of preparing parliament's interpreting service for EU enlargement next May. What he called the ''big bang'' expansion of the EU will almost double the number of languages used in the assembly, requiring a major rethink of how the interpreting service operates.
Assuming all 10 accession countries, mostly in Eastern Europe, take up the invitation to join the 15 existing EU states, each will bring its own language.
The only exception is the divided island state of Cyprus, which, unless its Greek and Turkish sides unify, will use only Greek, already an EU tongue. Even the Mediterranean island state of Malta, a former British colony where most of the 400,000 inhabitants speak fluent English, will have its own language recognised. Romania and Bulgaria hope to enter the EU in 2007.
The reason Parliament has resisted going the United Nations path of selecting a handful of widely used working languages is the principle that anyone, not just the highly educated or linguistically gifted, has the right to sit in the assembly.
That exercise was fairly simple when the EU was in its infancy in the 1950s.
The EU's forerunners, the coal and steel community and the European economic community, had only six member states and four languages, meaning no more than 12 language combinations. The EEC's first enlargement to three new countries in 1973 added Danish and English to the list.
Bureau Report