Vertaling - een DG dat uitstekende kwaliteit vertalingen en taalkundig advies geeft - onze dagelijkse opdracht (en)

Specialised translation services exist in each of the major institutions and bodies of the European Union - the Commission, the Council, the European Parliament, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions, the Court of Justice, the Court of Auditors, the European Central Bank, the European Investment Bank and the European Ombudsman.

The Directorate-General for Translation (DGT) of the European Commission is by far the largest because of Commission’s translation requirements, stemming especially from its ‘right of initiative’ and its monitoring role on the implementation of EU Law: proposals start in the Commission and end-results on the ground are later scrutinised by the Commission. With a total staff of 2350 (1750 translators and 600 support staff), DGT meets the Commission’s needs for translation and linguistic advice with respect to all types of written communication.

For organisational purposes, DGT is divided along language lines, with a separate language department for each official language. The language departments are further divided into units specialised in specific subjects of the European Commission’s policies: agriculture, competition, financial and monetary issues, education and culture, employment, energy, environment, external relations, regional policy and many more. Geographically, DGT is almost equally divided between Brussels and Luxembourg, and it also operates small Field Offices in the capitals of the Member States.

In 2007, the output of DGT was 1.7 million (1 762 773) translated pages^[1], 14% more than in 2006 and 57% more than in 1997. Of these, 72% had been drafted in English (45% in 1997), 14% in French (41% in 1997) and less than 3% in German (5% in 1997).

Around 24% of the translation is contracted out to free-lance translators. This applies, of course, to documents which are not legislative, politically sensitive, confidential or very urgent.

DGT uses a quality assurance system based on classifying documents by category. All translations that are intended for publication, whether done in-house or externally, are always revised. Translations requested for information or comprehension purposes are only revised if necessary.

Consistency in terminology is guaranteed by the use of translation memories and data bases of Community-relevant core terminology.

To cope with the enlargements of the Union and keep costs under control while guaranteeing the highest quality standards, the Commission has defined a strategic approach: prioritisation of documents, restrictions on their length and incorporating language dimension within the policy-making process of the Commission. Other important elements of the new approach are web translation, balancing of internal and external translation work and closer cooperation between the EU institutions.

Costs, a tiny part of the EU's budget

As compared with the total EU budget of EUR 129 billion, the annual cost of translation in the Commission is estimated to be around EUR 280 million, corresponding to a cost to each citizen of around EUR 0.60 per year. In 2006 the total cost of translation in all EU institutions was estimated at around EUR 800 million.

Not just translation of legal acts

To ensure democracy and participation in the European Union, citizens and stakeholders must have access to basic information on EU activities in the official languages on the Internet. In addition to the language-specific departments, therefore, DGT now has created a cross-language unit specialised in web translation. Specialised translators assist other Directorates-General not only in translating existing web pages, but also in better structuring their message and adapting it to the new media.

Another unit offers linguistic revision for Directorates-General where texts are often drafted in English and in French by non-native speakers. On request, these texts are examined and if needed amended to ensure they are not only correct but also linguistically fit for purpose, e.g. sufficiently clear to be understood by the target audience or to be translated into other languages.

DGT also contributes in a major way to bringing the Commission's messages closer to the citizens: some 50 translators currently work in DGT Field Offices, located within the Representations of the European Commission in the capitals and main cities of Member States. They actively participate to its communication policy and ensure contacts with the translation industry, translation professions, national authorities and institutions and the public at large.

To draw attention to the importance of translation in the Union and to give more visibility to the profession of translators, DGT has just launched a second translation contest for school pupils in all EU Member States.

Looking to the future

DGT provides training for its translators in the most widely used languages within the Commission to develop or maintain their language proficiency as well as their skills in DGT's information technology and translation tools and in the subject matters dealt with by the Commission.

In a longer term perspective, DGT promotes the creation of a European Master’s in Translation, a diploma based on a standard curriculum to ensure quality translators for the benefit of European institutions, companies and organisations. This will be particularly useful in both existing and candidate Member States where a system of translation studies is not yet fully developed.

Translators from DGT who learn new languages may also go as ‘Visiting Translators’ to universities of countries where that language is spoken to improve their skills while giving classes on translation and on multilingualism in the European institutions.

The terminological work done in the European institutions is of great value for people working in Member States as well. This is why the interinstitutional IATE database - containing almost 1.5 million multilingual entries - was made available to the general public in 2007, as well as translation corpora of EU legislation in 2008.

To translate the vast amount of documents produced by the European institutions, DGT has adopted or developed some of the most modern technologies - from speech recognition applications to computer-assisted translation, using its enormous ‘translation memories’ to ensure consistency of the output. These developments also contribute to the progress of the language-related industry in Europe.

For more information on DG Translation: http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/translation/

See also the Languages portal: http://europa.eu/languages/en/home

^[1] A page means 1 500 typed characters not including spaces.