EU language combinations stagger belief
Every savvy investor is more than aware of the magic of compound interest; through its marvels, great financial benefit can be accrued over a period of years.
As if in a sort of inverse parody of compound interest though, over the years, the language combinations within the European Parliament have compounded into something equally amazing.
Originally, at its inception, the official languages of the EU’s institutions amounted to only four, those of its founding nations, namely; France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Over the years, this has grown to a massive 23 different languages, which combine to produce a staggering 506 different language combinations.
The gargantuan task of translating these combinations falls to the Eu’s own 2,000 strong, Interpreting, Translation and Legal Text Verification Services Department as well as to a horde of ad-hoc freelance translators and interpreters, but it is still no mean task. Every session of the EU Parliament requires a minimum of 63 interpreters to be present per interpreting shift, but it seems that the translating team also have their share of logistical problems.
Because of EU translation directives, each of the 700 permanent staff translators is only allowed to translate into their mother tongue, but because of the 506 possible translation combinations it has often transpired that there is no available translator to translate directly from a certain source language into a specific target language…this is especially the case in regards to some of the less common EU languages.
To bypass this problem several ‘relay’ languages are used; a required text is translated from a less common language into one of the most commonly used languages such as English, French or German and then into the final destination (lesser used) language.
Lets just hope that no more countries get into the EU…who knows how many more language combinations that would yield!