Kim Willsher
LONDON SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
August 2002

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PARIS — By 2004, when a host of new states will join the
European Union, Brussels will have become a "Tower of
Babel," as the number of the union's official languages
swells from 11 to 21, concerned officials and members of the
European Parliament say.

An army of additional interpreters will be needed to
translate among all the different tongues, and officials are
already bracing themselves for a logistical nightmare.

"It's already complicated enough translating everything into
11 languages. It's going to be a real horror with 10 more,"
said one EU translator.

The changes will cost hundreds of millions of euros. The
European Commission's annual policy strategy report foresees
an extra cost of 20 million euros ($17.3 million) this year
in preparations alone.

The commission has said that while maintaining the principle
of multilingualism — enshrined in the first regulation
adopted by what was then the European Economic Community in
1958 — it is hoping to keep a lid on costs by modernizing
and ensuring better coordination among staffers.

Rather than trying to find language experts to translate
from, say, Lithuanian to Portuguese to Slovak, documents are
likely to go through a two-stage translation via a "relay"
language — English, French or German.

The commission's language service already employs about
1,500 translators who battle through 1.3 million pages of
documents a year; 700 interpreters are needed each day to
cover official meetings that number more than 11,000 each
year. This alone costs more than 800 million euros ($692
million).

"Eurocrats" have estimated that each new language will
require at least 110 new translators and 40 extra
interpreters. Together with support staff, this will result
in the addition of 2,500 civil servants to the 17,000
already working in Brussels.

A further 830 will have to be recruited in Strasbourg,
France — the parliament's other venue — doubling its budget
of 81 million euros ($70 million).

The European Union is currently negotiating with 13 states —
Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Estonia, Hungary,
Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovakia,
Slovenia and Turkey — over their prospective entry into the
union. A decision on which countries will join is expected
by the end of this year, but most are likely to be in the
first wave of new entrants in 2004.

The arrival of new members from Eastern Europe is likely to
see a growing use of English, much to the annoyance of the
other big EU powers — especially the French.

"The negotiations about enlargement were carried out while
France was presiding over the European Union," said one
European official. "But every one of the representatives
from the countries wishing to enter carried out their
discussions in English. ... The French were furious."

The growing use of English prompted the Italian
representative, Maria Campongrande, to write to Romano
Prodi, the commission president, to protest what she
described as the "stifling and constant evangelism of
English."

"Even at the United Nations, where all the official
languages are rigorously broadcast and protected, English
does not benefit from such a preponderance," she complained.

About 60 percent of EU documents are now drafted in English,
compared with less than 40 percent in French and 1 percent
in German. Even as angry Francophones stride the corridors
of European power, muttering about an Anglo-Saxon plot, a
recent EU survey found that 56 percent of the population of
EU member states spoke English as a first or second
language.

A cost-cutting plan — drawn up last year by Neil Kinnock,
the commission vice president — suggesting that EU documents
be studied in English and only translated when they were
adopted and published, was met with French accusations that
he was attempting a linguistic "coup d'etat."