Translating for the European Commission Vilnius, 7 June 2013 Miroslav Adamiš Director DGT

- Language regime of the European institutions - Activities of the DGT - Commission’s role in the legislative process 2

The legal basis Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union Citizens have a right to address the official EU bodies in any of the EU’s official languages and to receive a reply in that language. Council Regulation No 1/58 Regulations and other documents of general application shall be drafted in the official languages. 3

Official languages and working languages of the European Union Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish and Swedish. 4

EU official languages over time 5

Procedural languages - Article 6 of regulation 1/58 allows the EU institutions to stipulate in their rules of procedure which languages are to be used in specific cases. - The Commission decided to use English, French and German as procedural languages. - The documents have to be available in principle in DE, EN and FR for the meeting of Commissioners. 6

Language of original documents (%) English French German Others 7

Number of translated pages 2012 by target language (%) 8

Linguists in the EU Council Parliament Court of Justice Court of Auditors Economic & Social Committee Committee of the Regions Translators: ± 4300 European Central Bank Translation Centre Interpreters: ±

DGT’s activities translate legislative documents translate correspondence and other texts drafted by or addressed to the Commission translate websites summarise long documents orally or in writing edit Commission documents 10

Quality assurance - legislative documents and documents intended for publication are revised - computer assisted translation - cooperation with national ministries and authorities 11

DG Translation Some 2500 translators and support staff 50% in Brussels 50% in Luxembourg Field Offices in Member States 12

1.76 million pages translated in 2012 Evolution in the number of translated pages

Cost of multilingualism Translation and interpreting in all EU institutions put together cost each EU citizen just over 2 euros per year. The cost of multilingualism adds up to less than 1% of the annual EU budget. 14

Translation contest for Europe’s budding linguists Website: ec.europa.eu/translatoresec.europa.eu/translatores Facebook.com/translatores.com/translatores Twitter: 15

European Master’s in Translation 54 university programmes in Europe 16

Recruitment competitions for EU officials Publication: Official Journal of the European Union (C edition) EPSO (European Personnel Selection Office) website Selection procedure: 5 to 9 months 17

Recruitment criteria You must be an EU citizen You must hold a full university degree in languages or another field (minimum BA) No professional experience is required 18

EUR-Lex: free public access to EU law eur-lex.europa.eu 19

IATE: public multilingual term base iate.europa.eu 20

Acquis communautaire in form of a translation memory is freely available under the following link: ?id=197 ?id=197 21

Ordinary legislative procedure Commission: initiator of new legislation documents translated first by the European Commission entails the need to create new terms collaboration with Lithuanian authorities is appreciated 22

More information? Web: ec.europa.eu/dgs/translation Facebook.com/translatingforeurope 23

Thank you for your attention! 24