The translation flow is an enormous challenge to the EU. A serious amount of workforce is engaged as permanent or temporary staff, as trainees, freelancers and contractors. It is not possible to present the official figures of the entire translation staff outside and within the EU, as competitions are constantly being organized and especially with corporate contractors there would be no way to collect the number of translators, working part- or full-time on EU translation.
The First Official and Working Languages
The first Community Regulation determining official languages was passed in 1958: Regulation number 1 determining the languages to be used by the EEC. At the time Dutch, French, German and Italian were specified as the first official and working languages of the EU.
There are two main entitlements for languages with “official and working” status, as the website of the European Commission describes:
– documents may be sent to EU institutions and a reply received in any of these languages
– EU regulations and other legislative documents are published in the official and working languages, as is the Official Journal. More.
See: One Europe
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Comments about this article
Serbia
Local time: 10:38
English to Serbian
+ ...
"According to certain very rough estimates, the cost of all language services in all EU institutions amounts to less than 1% of the annual general budget of the EU. Divided by the population of the EU, this comes to around €2 per person per year."
(http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/translation/faq/index_en.htm)
Wow, I can't believe that some people complain about how translation is expensive for EU..
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