Tag: multilingualism

EXCLUSIVE / A EurActiv survey of French EU professionals in Brussels, published ahead of Bastille Day, shows that an overwhelming 60% of respondents believe their country’s influence in Europe has declined since the financial and economic crisis swept the continent in 2008.

With the decline of French language in EU institutions now accepted by most as irreversible, French lawmakers and officials have started pushing a more assertive approach, based on the promotion of multilingualism and influence rather than language issues only.

INTERVIEW / Just as the EU legislates to protect migrating birds and wildlife habitats, it should also protect its 120 or so endangered languages, argues François Alfonsi, a Corsican MEP who has prepared a parliamentary report that could name and shame European wrongdoers.

The European Parliament has agreed to cut part of its translation service, in a bid to shave its budget by some €8.6 million per year.

Speaking in tribute to the European day of languages on Wednesday (26 September), Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou said it was a time to “celebrate” multilingualism in all its forms, but that immigrants must learn the language of their “host” country.

The European Commission, which drafts legislation which governs the lives of European citizens, works overwhelmingly in English. However a language is not simply a neutral conduit for information and there are ways of making the EU’s administration more multilingual and representative of its citizens, argues Michel Soubies.

Pupils across the EU are overwhelmingly studying English as a second language, 82% of these at primary and lower-secondary level, and 95% at upper-secondary level, a Eurostat survey published  yesterday (26 September) on the occasion of the tenth European Day of Languages.

By the end of 2012, the EU will have an online observatory for multilingualism, which will document best practice in implementing language policies and showcase concrete tools for solving everyday foreign language communication problems, Uwe Mohr, head of an EU project called Poliglotti4.eu, told EurActiv in an interview.

Multilingualism is crucial for SMEs to be able to thrive in Europe, heard participants at a debate organised by a French language association, hosted by the European Commission.

Bilateral agreements will remain the basis of relations between Switzerland and EU countries, Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey told EurActiv ahead of hosting the thirteenth international Francophonie summit. 

With every round of enlargement, the EU's internal correspondence has steered further towards English as its main working language, heard participants at a conference in Brussels this week.

The EU institutions will tomorrow (13 July) launch competitions to recruit translators for five languages. The move will be followed a week later by similar moves to find interpreters for five tongues as the EU bids to address impending staff shortages.

The European Commission should continue to provide information in non-official EU languages, MEPs urged this week (15 March), expressing disappointment that Russian-language fact-sheets produced by the EU executive's offices in Latvia were recently withdrawn.

Catalan, Basque, Galician, Welsh and Scots Gaelic should be made official languages of the European Union, MEPs said last week, accusing Brussels of failing to protect "the rights of millions of speakers of non-official EU languages" and calling on the EU institutions to do "much more" to promote multilingualism.  

The EU this week (8-9 December) launched a European Master's in Translation (EMT) network to provide high-quality education for translation students in view of nurturing a competent workforce for its institutions.

Pupils from across the EU are today (24 November) competing for EU-wide translation prizes in a competition designed to promote the profession among young people in Europe.

The EU institutions have launched a campaign ahead of this weekend's European Languages Day aimed at encouraging young French speakers to consider a career in interpreting, as the European Commission moves to address the "serious shortage" of French interpreters it expects to hit its services in the next five to 10 years.

There is still room for improvement regarding the number of documents translated into German by the European institutions, despite recent growth in the number of German EU officials using their native language professionally, Margareta Hauschild, director of the Goethe-Institut Belgien in Brussels, told EurActiv in an interview.

The Welsh will be able to write to the EU executive in their native language as of today (9 July), following the signature of an agreement between the UK government and the European Commission.

EU Multilingualism Commissioner was in London today (2 April) for the launch of an innovative project combining foreign-language learning and football training run by Arsenal football club.

The European Parliament has called on the European Council to boost the use of German and other languages on its websites, including those of EU presidencies.

Over 90% of European schoolchildren learn English at some stage of their compulsory education and this figure is rising, according to a study presented on Friday (21 November) by the Eurydice network on behalf of the European Commission. The report also found that children across the EU are starting to learn foreign languages at an earlier age. 

Multilingualism Commissioner Leonard Orban has spoken to EurActiv Slovakia of his conviction that the dossier will continue to be afforded "its own place" in the EU policy framework after the expiry of the European Commission's current mandate in autumn 2009.

The EU executive was not "courageous" enough to set out concrete initiatives to promote minority languages in its new multilingualism strategy, according to parliamentarians from the European Free Alliance, who called for "specific measures than go beyond generics" ahead of the European Day of Languages on 26 September.