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WORLD CITIZEN LETTER: 478
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WCL 478 September 2004
Babel in Brussels
News last spring that Spain had requested the EU translation service to provide for three co-official Spanish languages needed to be taken very seriously. It implied that the flood-gates for more and yet more linguistic employees should be set to their incessant labour in the European towers of Babel. Not content that introducing a flurry of newcomers to the Union had raised demand for interpretation and translation to an almost unbearable level, the Spaniards asked for more. One can only suspect an intention to provide a linguistic 'reductio ad absurdam'.
As if to confirm this came a mention of Cornish as one of the projected extra tongues to be favoured: the last native speaker of that language died over 300 years ago. Already the demand for linguists able to provide direct translators from one little-used language to a second has stretches resources to the limit. To find speakers of Maltese competent to translate the language into Estonian or Danish may be near impossible.
Recognizing that there are more speakers of Catalan than Danish in the EU raises the spectre of having to search for Catalans to provide direct equivalents of Danish, Estonian and Maltese, among others. Even to satisfy a requirement to put official documents such as treaties and regulations of the Union into the newly official languages will be a very hard task: why add to the burden? The simple answer is that a native language is so intimate a part of the human being's sense of self that full citizenship requires it to be forthcoming to enable participation in the affairs of a democracy, which is what the European Union is intended to be.
It could be that the failure of the English (and even the French) to take a full share in the EU - in fact to fail to take it seriously - is due to their disdain for the linguistic rights of others. Just as the French have always tended to equate civilization with the use of French so the anglophones, perhaps less deliberately but similarly, see English as the inevitable medium for the advancement of human progress.
World citizens, like all others, suffer if they succumb to such narrow views of language. It may be that the EU, facing a practical challenge through the staggering expense and pointlessness of its bureaucratic obsession with completeness, will prove the Achilles heel of this delusion. To condemn vast numbers of the world's people to restrict themselves either to someone else's language or to the selected minority language of their own choice is not by any means satisfactory. And translations are always to some extent inadequate, since they add to the inevitable complexity of understanding other people the additional barrier of a different language.
The monumental expense of providing unlimited translation facilities between the 23 or more members of the European Union is still increasing. It is a considerable burden and most of it is only useful to perform functions that are neither productive nor life-enhancing. Billions of euros are poured out in salaries, in printing machines, in paper and recording devices. Space for interpreters has to be excessive and the mere clutter of these industrious serfs and their equipment is forbiddingly intimidating to the ordinary citizen of the Union. The apparatus grows and grows while the complexity makes the task of keeping the institutions human and democratic ever more difficult.
So what can be done to diminish the expense and democratic deficit found in the translation industry? There is a simple answer, which may prove simplistic, but at least deserves attention and even study. All official documents from the EU destined to go to member-states should be published in a neutral, non-national, language; the only current candidate for such a role is Esperanto, but it might be that a new and better one should be created from scratch. That, of course, would take time and Esperanto, although not perfect, has in a history of over a century proved capable of bearing the weight of usage in all sorts of human affairs.
The Union might also choose to circulate information about its activities in other languages, but that would be policy, not obligation. From that official provision, the remainder of interpretation and translation should rest with the member-states. Each of them would choose what and how they would get the information to their own citizens. Thus they would have the responsibility for finding the translators from the neutral language into their own, which could be Catalan or even Cornish. Equally, if they wished to intervene in debates they could choose Esperanto, or Catalan - or Cornish - but would inevitably bear in mind that, like Irish, Cornish would be understood by an insignificant fraction of the Union's listeners.
It did not take long for the foregoing comment to be buttressed by a newspaper report this month that EU legislation is now being held up owing to a scarcity of translators. The impossibility of finding Czech translations to some of the other new languages has led to a halt in the process of passing on information in the way required. Since national pride, the laws and rules of the Union and political necessity combine to make the present situation intolerable, when will the electors wake up to the colossal waste of money that does into unnecessary translations?
John Roberts
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