Ghent University Faculty of Arts and Philosophy

Is absolute maintainable? The policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a

Supervisor: Paper submitted in partial fulfilment of the Dr. Katrijn Maryns requirements for the degree of “Master in de Taal- en Letterkunde: Nederlands - Engels” by Caroline Bogaert

2010 - 2011 Preface

For two years, I have been able to immerse myself in the language systems of the European institutions. Although I knew very little about the institutions and their functioning at first, I am happy that, because of this final dissertation, I have now gained in-depth knowledge in what appears to be an effervescent and almost magical secluded world. What might seem a dull and bureaucratic system, is actually a well-oiled machine that, without a doubt, is one of the world’s most powerful democracies.

How this grand system employing thousands of citizens from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds can function so effectively, gained my interest and compelled me to investigate this matter. The results of my research can be read below. The critique on Europe’s multilingual system will never fade, but that does not mean that it should be forgotten what tremendous results this language regime has yielded in the past, and will keep doing so in the future.

Writing a final dissertation has not always been an easy process and in that respect, it goes without saying that I would like to thank a few people who have helped me along the way. First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Maryns, who helped me explore this topic from different angles and who was always available to provide me with constructive criticism. Also, I owe much gratitude to each of my interviewees and the other practitioners who have shared their opinions on this topic with me: Mr. Coolegem, Mr. de Corte, Ms. Mamadouh, Ms. Pitt, Mr. Richter and Mr. Wooding. It is self-evident that without the help of the seven people mentioned above, I would not have been able to write this thesis.

Lastly, I would also like to thank Geert Bogaert, Martine Declercq, Tina Bogaert, Godelieve De Latte and Kevin De Pril for their continuous support. Table of Contents

1. Introduction...... 1 1.1 Importance and purpose...... 1

1.2 Research questions...... 1

1.3 Outline and methodology...... 2

1.4 Main sources and preliminary research ...... 3

2. The language system of the ...... 4 2.1 The global language system of the EU ...... 4

2.2 Current language regime of the European Parliament...... 7

2.2.1 The European Parliament: sui generis?...... 7 2.2.2 Institutional framework for the European language policy: an overview...... 9 2.2.2.1 Regulation 1/58...... 9 2.2.2.2 Criticism on Regulation 1/58...... 10 2.2.2.3 Controlled full multilingualism – the Podestà report...... 10 2.2.2.4 Controlled full multilingualism in the Code of Conduct ...... 11 2.2.3 DG Interpretation and DG Translation: units that guarantee multilingualism ...... 11 2.2.3.1 Directorate-General Interpretation...... 11 2.2.3.2 Directorate-General Translation ...... 13 2.3 Future enlargements...... 14

2.3.1 Turkey...... 15 2.3.2 Croatia...... 16 2.3.3 The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia...... 17 2.3.4 Iceland...... 18 2.3.5 Montenegro ...... 19 3. The use of English in the EU ...... 21 3.1 English as a lingua franca ...... 21

3.1.1 Figures...... 22 3.1.2 Competing as a lingua franca...... 24 3.1.3 Consequences...... 25 3.2 In the Union ...... 27 i

Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca 3.2.1 Figures...... 27 3.2.2 Competing languages as a lingua franca...... 28 3.2.3 Why English?...... 29 3.2.4 Consequences...... 29 3.3 Artificial languages as a lingua franca...... 30

4. Literature study: theoretical perspective...... 32 4.1 Current debate: “The more languages, the more English” (de Swaan 2001) ...... 33

4.2 Acknowledgement of the problem...... 35

4.2.1 The Union does not take the problem seriously...... 35 4.2.2 Problems will arise in the future ...... 36 4.2.3 Lack of clear language policy...... 36 4.3 Solutions offered...... 37

4.3.1 Review of the multilingualism-system ...... 37 4.3.2 One single working language...... 37 4.3.3 Limited number of working languages ...... 38 4.4 Is the debate exaggerated? ...... 39

4.4.1 Acknowledgement of the problem...... 39 4.4.2 Solutions ...... 41 4.4.3 English or an international auxiliary language as a lingua franca ...... 42 4.4.4 Conclusion ...... 43 5. Interview data: the gap between theory and practice...... 44 5.1 The context of the interviews...... 44

5.2 Acknowledgement of the problem...... 45

5.3 Solutions ...... 46

5.4 English or an international auxiliary language as a lingua franca ...... 48

5.5 Future perspectives ...... 49

5.6 Conclusion ...... 50

6. Discussion: future developments ...... 53 6.1 Different working languages...... 53

6.2 English as a lingua franca ...... 54

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca 6.3 Maintenance of controlled full multilingualism ...... 55

6.4 The European Union will further develop its diglossic language situation...... 56

7. Concluding remarks...... 59 8. Bibliography ...... 64 9. Appendices...... 69 9.1 Interview with the head of the Directorate-General of translation ...... 69

9.2 Interview with the head of Unit for Multilingualism...... 72

9.3 Interview with the head of the Directorate Interpretation...... 81

9.4 Interview with a translator and a former interpreter ...... 85

9.5 Interview with a scholar who specialises in these matters...... 89

9.6 Written document: Basic information on interpreting in the EP ...... 98

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca 1. Introduction

1.1 Importance and purpose

Multilingualism and the rise of English in European institutions is a widely debated topic. Whereas in academic circles it is argued that the quality of both the interpretation and the translation system has reached its limits, this statement is denied by practitioners from inside the system. However, with the upcoming enlargements and no clear boundary to the amount of countries that might join the Union in the future, the question of how the Parliament copes with these concerns, presents itself. Can the Parliament maintain its language regime of full multilingualism or is the becoming too important? This dissertation goes more deeply into this debate and the suggested solutions for this potential problem. Not only will this paper describe what the current state of affairs is, with regards to the future enlargement of the European Union (EU), it will also investigate what the current language policy of the European Parliament (EP) actually entails, and more precisely, to what extent contemporary practice corresponds to what the theory prescribes. Within the scope of this theory-versus-practice-dichotomy, I will try to find out if the increase of English usage in (the corridors of) the European Parliament, lies at the basis. For this, I will depart from Abram de Swaan’s slogan “the more languages, the more English!” (2001: 144). De Swaan is a renowned Dutch political sociologist of language who investigates the importance of English as a global language, and links it to the number of languages that is spoken worldwide. Evidently, this is not a new phenomenon, but the need for one , an idea that gradually arose over the past couple of decades, is all the more a recent phenomenon. In the process of exploring de Swaan’s theory, the ideas of David Crystal on the status of English as a lingua franca will also be looked into (Crystal 1999; Scholes 2010). I will apply both scholars’ line of thought to the setting of the European Parliament and its approaching enlargements.

1.2 Research questions

Both de Swaan’s and Crystal’s ideas, combined with the findings of my preliminary research, have led me to the following research questions: Is multilingualism in the European Parliament maintainable and is it threatened by the increasing of English as a lingua franca? And to what extent are both phenomena correlated to each other? In other

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca words, is the fear that English will become the sole working language of the European institutions justified and to what extent is this caused by an exaggerated and almost artificial sense of tenacity towards Europe’s language diversity? This rather extensive research question can easily be divided into different components. Not only will the current language policy of the European Parliament be described and discussed, future enlargements of the EU and their consequences on a linguistic level will be handled as well. Furthermore, the concept of ‘lingua franca’ and more particularly, ‘English’ as a lingua franca, or the so-called globish will be explored and it will be linked to the findings of the academics mentioned here above and related research in the field of English as a global language. As a conclusion, I would then like to find out if there is indeed a connection between the increase of the usage of English and the enormous language diversity in the setting of the European Parliament.

1.3 Outline and methodology

As outlined above, the current language system of the European Union and the European Parliament will be described in the next chapter. More particularly, the focus will be on how this system has involved over the last decennia. In the third chapter, departing from David Crystal’s opinions on the matter, I will outline the use of English in the EU and how it acts as a lingua franca worldwide. Subsequently, the theoretical perspective on the debate will be looked into: de Swaan’s theory and the opinions of other academics will be explored. In the same chapter, I will also investigate a more moderate take on the debate, based on the interview I conducted with Virginie Mamadouh, a scholar specialized in the language regime of the European institutions. In chapter four, the opinions of specialists on Europe’s language policy will be described and I will present them with the criticism that is so often uttered with regard to the language policy of the Parliament: it is too expensive, limits have been reached and a solution needs to be found. The specialists I have chosen to interview in this framework are the head of the Directorate-General for Translation, Miss Janet Pitt, and the Head of Unit for Multilingualism and External Relations Service, Mr. Jochen Richter. The latter also used to be Deputy Head of Cabinet to the Commissioner for Multilingualism under the Barroso I Commission. Furthermore, I interviewed Mr. Sjef Coolegem, who is the Head of Directorate for Interpretation and, during my preliminary research, I interviewed Mr. Fred de Corte, who is a translator and former interpreter in the European Parliament. After a conclusion on the general tenor of these interviews, these findings will be juxtaposed to what the academic literature says about the matter, in chapter five. In the last but one chapter, I will discuss some

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca hypotheses for the future and what the consequence would be if each of these hypotheses would be carried into effect. After summarizing the results of study, a detailed overview of my final conclusions will be provided in the last chapter.

1.4 Main sources and preliminary research

In my bachelor paper, future enlargements were investigated and how they would threaten the language policy of the European institutions, and more particularly, the functioning of the interpreting system of the European Parliament. As a conclusion, I found out that, although the Union considers multilingualism to be one of its key points, during the course of the years, the institutions had to adapt their initial idea of absolute multilingualism. The premise of absolute multilingualism, as it was laid down in the famous Regulation No. 1, which says that all languages of the European Union are to be treated as official languages, was perceived as not maintainable due to pragmatic, financial and structural complications. A growing body of opinion claims that a revision of both the translation and interpreting system is advisable, preferably taking into account the opinions of the linguistic staff and of academic scholars. Departing from the conclusions of this preliminary research, I will go more deeply into what renowned academics have said about the matter. My main primary sources are Virginie Mamadouh’s articles on the matter and more particularly, her book De talen in het Europees Parlement (1995). Also de Swaan’s book Words of the world. The global language system (2001) will form an important part of my reading and I will combine his opinions with the viewpoints of David Crystal (1999). Furthermore, the five interviews I conducted will also play a substantial role in my findings and they are elaborated upon in the fifth chapter. I will also make use of a written document sent to me by Martin Wooding1, head of Unit of Support to Multilingualism.

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca 2. The language system of the European Union

2.1 The global language system of the EU

Although this paper deals with the language regime of the European Parliament in particular, it is useful to bear in mind that the communication in this institution is but a minor part of the communication in total in the Union. Moreover, it is self-evident that all communication in the Parliament is inextricably linked to the forms of communication in the entire Union. Abram de Swaan lists 4 levels of communication within the European Union, in his book Words of the world. The global language system (2001). The figure below gives a schematic overview of those levels:

Internal Transnational communication of communication the Member States: between Europe’s official ‘mother citizens: tongue’ language English

Civilian Society

Internal bureaucracy of the Formal, public Institutions: communication: number of working Regulation No. 1! languages

European institutions

Figure 2: The different levels of communication within the European Union as a language constellation

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca Firstly, he makes a distinction between the civil society and the European institutions. The communication on the level of the civil society can be divided into two other levels, that of the national and the transnational level. The national constellations of languages in Europe are - simply put - the languages that are spoken within each member state. It is the mother tongue of most citizens in the country and it is widely used in all domains of the public life. In Europe, these languages are protected by the state and can therefore be called robust, as de Swaan puts it. They are not subject to great changes, but will instead become stronger in the future as they are seen as cherished national heritage. This is an important feature of the European languages, because it has as a consequence that, as opposed to certain African or Indian languages, they will never dissolve in other pidgin or mixed languages. Because of its robustness, competition between the languages is strong and leads to jealousy. As de Swaan puts it: “Jealousy between the settled language groups that are supported by the member states, will always impede the introduction of one certain language as the only of the European Union” (de Swaan 2002: 190, my translation). In other words, not only will English never threaten the existence and robustness of other (smaller) languages, it will almost certainly never be introduced as the sole official language in the Union. The other level of communication within Europe’s civil society is the transnational communication among the citizens of the different member states, in different regions and in divergent spheres of communication. It almost always happens in English, but in certain areas, other languages still compete as a lingua franca with English. French can compete with English, mainly in the south of Europe and because of historical reasons. German competes with English in Central-Europe but mostly out of demographical reasons2. Still, these languages disappear into nothingness, compared to the prevailing status of English as the medium for international communication. That has to do with both the prestige and the attractiveness of the language. It is the most important in education for the Union, and it has the highest score of centrality, as de Swaan puts it (2002: 196, my translation). That means that the percentage of multilingual speakers that have knowledge of English is the highest, compared to the total number of multilingual European citizens. Also, the issue of self-confidence, when speaking a certain language, is of importance. “Not only do more people learn English than any other language in the Union, they also use with a lot more self-confidence” (de Swaan 2002: 203, my translation). In short, English will remain the most dominant language in international (civil) communication, while French and German will keep competing for the second place on the list. 5

Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca The third level of communication in the Union is that of the formal and public speech, which is a part of the communication on the level of the institutions, according to de Swaan. As already mentioned earlier, on this ‘official’ level, institutional multilingualism is the rule. This institutional multilingualism might come across as part of the typical almost parish-pump bureaucracy of the Union, but the opposite is true. It is deeply rooted in the foundational documents of the Union and ensures equality between all member states, which is the basic requirement for democracy. Multilingualism is, in other words, intrinsically characteristic for the European Union. According to de Swaan, it is therefore highly unlikely that this idea of equal treatment of all member states will ever be abandoned. However, that does not mean that this idea is very well executed in practice. De Swaan explains that, because decisions with regards to the language policy need to be taken unanimously, a certain unbreakable cycle of voting occurs. The country whose language would be put at a disadvantage, would always exercise its veto. This causes a form of immobility and silence whenever the language-issue is raised. On the rare occasions when the European language issue is raised nevertheless, a cabal of experts in the relevant disciplines and of representatives of the affected interests will use the occasion for a high display of convictions and commitments, most of them as pious in their respect for the language rights of each and every party involved as they are pretentious in their ambitions for a grand scheme of European cultural rapprochement. The two do not go together (de Swaan 2001: 171).

The fourth and final level of communication in the Union in de Swaans view is that of the bureaucracy in the European institutions. On this level, in several institutions, a certain number of working languages are used. Those languages are almost always English and to a lesser extent, French. Germany has always called for their language to be taken more seriously as a working language for several institutions, but despite this, French and especially English, are still much more used. In the Commission, knowledge of both languages is a prerequisite when applying for a function, and in 1991, more than 90% of the Commissions civil servants spoke English, and more than 70% spoke French. Only a mere 16% spoke German. In the Parliament, de Swaan mentions, is the rule of complete multilingualism not respected in daily practice: “the lower the hierarchy and the more informal the meetings, the smaller the number of languages used” (de Swaan 2002: 213, my translation). Also, in the Parliaments corridors, English or the Eurospeak-version of it is used. De Swaan also refers to franglais or frenglish, a mixture of English and French that is often spoken among the Members of Parliament and their assistants. 6

Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca 2.2 Current language regime of the European Parliament

There is no doubt that language and equality between languages is one of the most important issues for the European Parliament. As mentioned in the introduction, the language policy is a hot issue for the Parliament. Now, more than ever, it seems as if the translation and/or interpretation system is on the verge of reaching its limits of capacity. However, when looking at the history of the Parliament, it seems as if it has overcome all of the problems that formed a threat in the past. As Ms. Mamadouh put it: “Whenever there is a new enlargement, the same concern occurs. Each time, people say: ‘This time, it won’t work.’ And yet, every time they find a solution” (interview with Mamadouh, March 22, 2011, my translation). In order to investigate whether or not the Parliament can hold on to its desired multilingualism, it is important to know what exactly the language policy of the European Parliament is and why this is such an important issue. In this section, I will briefly describe the nature of the European Parliament, and what sets it apart from the other European institutions. Afterwards, I will give an overview of the current language regime and how this has come about. And in the last part of this chapter, I will shortly describe which organs within the European Parliament, were set up to guarantee that the language regime of the Parliament is respected and preserved. Because I have already described (more thoroughly) the different parts of this chapter (especially the first and third part) in the bachelor paper I wrote, I will now handle these subjects only briefly. However, I would like to emphasize that clear and detailed knowledge of these subjects contributes to a better understanding of the research questions I will try to answer in this study.

2.2.1 The European Parliament: Sui generis?

As I pointed out in my bachelor paper, the European Parliament is the only European institution in which the members are elected directly by the European citizens, every five years (Delegation of the European Union, 2009b). It represents the citizens of the different nations of the European Union and is seen as one of the world’s most important democracies. Because the EP represents all of Europe’s citizens, multilingualism is a vital property of this institution. Not only in the Parliament, but also in other European institutions, this ‘institutional multilingualism’ is considered to be an absolute surplus value. As Mamadouh puts it in her book De talen in het Europees Parlement (1995): The advantages of the institutional multilingualism are clear: the equality among languages is safeguarded, thus also the equality between the cultures of the different

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca member states. This enhances the democracy within the European Union, especially because the relationship between the European institutions and citizens is facilitated (Mamadouh 1995: 14, my translation).

However, - as mentioned above – because the Parliament is a democracy and its members are elected directly, multilingualism is probably even more important here than in the other European institutions. Also, because of its democratic nature, the Parliament is obliged to guarantee Europe’s citizens the freedom of speech. Each and every citizen of Europe has “the right to write to Parliament with a question, to express [his or her] views, [and] to receive all public documents” in their own language (European Parliament c). Only complete multilingualism can assure that these rights are respected at all times, simply because one cannot expect of common citizens that they express their needs in a language that is not their own. Other European institutions, by contrast, are not necessarily democratic by nature, and therefore have a different language policy. The only uses French, English and to a lesser extent, German, as working languages, though in formal and public occasions, full translation and interpretation services can be provided. This is in line with the Commission’s official commitment “to practicing full multilingualism in its external communications” (Athanassiou 2006: 21). Nevertheless, it needs to be noted that the Commission’s language regime – just like the Parliament’s language regime – has been subject to criticism. Criticizers claim that the Commission’s statements on its language regime are too vague and undefined (Athanassiou 2006). The European Court of Justice also upholds multilingualism, because it is a multinational institution. However, this multilingualism differs from the Parliament’s multilingualism, because it is not carried out on an absolute or permanent basis. In practice, this means that the applicant can decide what the language of his or her case will be. Sometimes “the language of the national court or tribunal which has requested the preliminary ruling” will be used (Athanassiou 2006: 23). Also, the judges are allowed to use whatever language they want, and they can request translation in any language of every document. In spite of all these measurements, the internal deliberations will still be in French, because this is the language of the internal administration (Athanassiou 2006). The Council of the European Union represents the governments of each member, which means that it has to warrant absolute equality between the different member states and thus also between the different official languages. In order words, the Council is bound to 8

Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca official multilingualism. However, Article 14, the article in which the language regime of the Council is laid down, also mentions that there is room for departure from the rules, if at least the Council unanimously agrees that a deviation from this ‘full multilingualism’ is necessary. However, in practice this leads to the unofficial adoption of three working languages (English, French and to a lesser extent, German), in particular in the preparatory bodies of the Council (Athanassiou 2006).

2.2.2 Institutional framework for the European language policy: an overview

Giving an overview of the language policy of the European Parliament as such, - without handling an overview of the language policies of other major European institutions and their evolutions – is like giving an incomplete version of the facts. However, because of the reasons mentioned above, it is not that difficult to consider the Parliament as an independent organ, completely isolated from other institutions, even though it started as ‘the Common Assembly in 1952, a ‘mere’ branch of the then European Coal and Steel Community. Nevertheless, because of the complex history of the EU and its institutions, I will, where relevant, frame my overview of the language policy of the Parliament against a wider discussion of the language policies in the entire Union.

2.2.2.1 Regulation 1/58

The most important document, with respect to the language policy of the European institutions, is the famous Regulation No. 1 – 1958. It is still considered to be the founding document, on which the whole language regime of the EU is based. It was drawn up in 1958 by the European Economic Community (EEC), which was founded after the signing of the Treaty of Rome in 1957 (interview with Richter, April 11, 2011). Although the term ‘multilingualism’ is nowhere to be found in this document, hints of this idea are already clearly present. It determines that the languages of the member states3 are the official languages and the working languages of the institutions of the Community. In Article 8 of this Regulation, it is laid down that it “shall be binding in its entirety and directly applicable in all Member States” (Council of the European Union, 2007). In other words, the EEC, which later became the European Union, will always have to use the official languages of their member states as working languages. According to Mr. Richter, Head of Unit of multilingualism, it was partly because of that this Regulation was even drawn up. Before the Treaty of Rome, French was the

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca preponderant language in the internal system. After the predecessor of the European Union was established by the Treaty of Rome, it was almost self-evident that French would become “la langue fait seul foi, which means that whenever there is any divergence in language, they would fall back to the version” (interview with Richter, April 11, 2011). This would almost certainly result in French becoming the prevalent working language of the EEC, and perhaps later even of the Union. But, most likely because of its turbulent history with the French language, Belgium opposed to this state of affairs, and the famous Regulation No. 1 was drawn up, almost as to hush up the argument. Interestingly, it is this Regulation No. 1, which is now the deeper cause of Europe’s multilingualism (interview with Richter, April 11, 2011).

2.2.2.2 Criticism on Regulation 1/58

Nevertheless, this Regulation 1/58 was not spared the criticism. As Ms. Mamadouh puts it: “[equality between languages] is a consequence of that vague regulation from 1958, that mentions that all languages are official languages and working languages, but what that exactly entails, no one knows” (interview with Mamadouh, March 22, 2011, my translation). The second issue of the Legal Working Paper Series (2006), an initiative which stems from the European Central Bank, deals with multilingualism in the European Union. The author, Athanassiou, also criticizes the fact that national official languages are not taken into account in Regulation 1/58 and that there is no clear distinction between – or a clear definition of, for that matter – ‘working’ languages or ‘official’ languages (Athanassiou, 2006). “If you interpret it literally, it can also mean that the working language should be one of the official languages, but not necessarily all 23 languages at once” (interview with Mamadouh, March 22, 2011, my translation).

2.2.2.3 Controlled full multilingualism – the Podestà report

On the 14th of May 2003, the Parliament introduced the concept of ‘controlled full multilingualism’ in its resolution. It was the Parliament’s intention to specify this idea and they called on the Bureau4 to come up with concrete proposals on how to lower costs, while preserving the equality between languages (Pozzo & Jacometti: 2006). About a month later, the Podestà report was presented to the Bureau. Pozzo and Jacometti (2006) state that the report proposed a great deal of budgetary measurements that could help prepare the Union for the mega-enlargement5 in 2004. For the interpretation system, Podestà proposed (among other

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca things) the following: the establishment of “a mixed system of interpreting, making use of all recognised techniques, on the basis of the effective requirements and availability of interpreters”, “[a] better spacing of committee meeting”, “an outline sketch of the ‘linguistic profile’ for each Parliamentary committee, indicating the languages actually requested for its meetings”,... (Pozzo & Jacometti 2006: 138) Also provided in the report, though less elaborate, were possible measurements for the translation system such as “an increase in external translation and semi-automatic translation”, “[the] transitional use of pivot languages, also for translation” and “[the] lengthening of time-limits for sending documents for translation, or reduction of derogations” (Pozzo & Jacometti 2006: 138).

2.2.2.4 Controlled full multilingualism in the Code of Conduct

The European Parliament officially approved of the concept of ‘controlled full multilingualism’ and in the annual Code of Conduct on Multilingualism, that was adopted by the Bureau on 19 April 2004, it is stated that “controlled full multilingualism’ represents the only means of keeping the costs of multilingualism within acceptable budgetary limits, whilst maintaining equality among Members and citizens” (European Parliament 2004: 1). In practice, this ‘controlled full multilingualism’ entails that for preparatory documents of certain meetings, full translation and interpretation in all 23 languages is not necessarily offered. Instead, ‘linguistic profiles’ are established by, for instance, parliamentary committees, so that only the languages that are actually needed are used. Sometimes, the members of certain smaller meetings might themselves decide to use only one language, or a limited number of languages, for pragmatic reasons (European Parliament, 2007b). Mr. Coolegem explains it as follows: “all languages [still] have equal rights, but efficiency and expediency are taken into account, while at the same time, not negating the rights of MEPs [Member of the Parliament]” (interview with Coolegem, March 22, 2011, my translation)

2.2.3 DG Interpretation and DG Translation: units that guarantee multilingualism

2.2.3.1 Directorate-General Interpretation

Given the promise to encourage multilingualism and to respect all languages in the Union, the interpretation system of the Parliament is one of the most complicated and expensive services offered by the European Union. It employs about 330 interpreters on a permanent basis, but can at busy moments make use of the (approximately) 2,800 freelance interpreters, also called

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca Auxiliary Conference Interpreters. These “are paid on a daily basis and [...] account for about 50% of the total annual workload. [They] are recruited [...] according to quality, language combination and availability” (written document by Wooding, March 21, 2011). About a third of the entire European Parliament expenditure is spent on translation and interpretation services (European Parliament, 2007b). The official website of the European Parliament reports that in 2005 the European Parliament disbursed € 190 million for interpretation only. It was calculated that in 2008, the translation and interpretation services of all the EP institutions, cost about € 2.5 per citizen (EPP Group, 2007; EUbusiness, 2009; European Parliament, 2007b; Hennigan, 2006). Interpretation is especially needed for the plenary sessions, during which full language coverage is provided. That means that everything is (as far as possible) fully interpreted into the 22 other languages, which results in 506 possible combinations6. Each of the 23 different versions are recorded and kept in a public archive, to ensure the democratic rights of the European citizens. For other occasions, such as meetings of political groups, meetings of European Parliament committees and press conferences, interpretation is usually only provided in the languages that are required according to Martin Wooding, who is the Head of Unit for Support to Multilingualism (written document by Wooding, March 21, 2011). These measurements are part of the concept of ‘controlled full multilingualism’, which was introduced in 2004, after the mega-enlargement. They facilitate the interpreters’ working conditions and help to keep the costs low. Another measurement7 with the same purpose is the relay system. When a certain language combination is not covered, the interpreters can make use of an intermediary step, the so-called relay or pivot-language. These languages are almost always English, French or German8, and make it possible to indirectly interpret from certain languages into others, if an interpreter who speaks both languages, is not present. This kind of interpretation, via a relay language, often takes place when interpreters translate simultaneously (written document by Wooding, March 21, 2011). Simultaneous interpretation is the most frequently used form of interpretation in the Parliament. The interpreters sit in a sound-proof booth with a view on the meeting room, listen to the speech through a special headset and at the same time, translate it into a microphone. Another form of interpretation which is used in the Parliament is ‘consecutive interpretation’: interpreters listen to the speaker and afterwards interpret this speech

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca completely. This type of interpretation, however, is seldom used when more than two languages need to be interpreted from (written document by Wooding, March 21, 2011).

2.2.3.2 Directorate-General Translation

Differently from interpreters, translators have time and help at their disposal. In other words, they do not need to deliver the translated version of a text immediately on the spot and they very often can rely on technological means to help them translate and control the texts. The Parliament employs about 700 translators, and can, like the Directorate-General (DG) interpretation, rely on external translators if that is considered necessary. Furthermore, a tight collaboration with translation systems of the other institutions is often a solution as well. If the translators of the Parliament are too busy to translate a certain document, they might refer it to the translators of the Commission. The translators translate documents from the plenary sessions, decisions made by the Bureau, committee documents and documents from other political organs (European Parliament a; European Parliament b). Similarly to the DG interpretation, there are 506 possible language combinations via which translation can happen. Because of this large number, the translation system often works with relay or pivot-languages, usually English, French or German. The official website of the European Parliament, mentions that Italian, Polish or Spanish, being the three other major European languages, could be used as a relay language as well, if direct translation to one of the minor languages is impossible (European Parliament a). When the idea of ‘controlled full multilingualism’ was developed, certain measurements that were proposed with regards to the DG Translation were taken into account. As Mr. de Corte points out, certain internal or administrative documents are no longer translated into all 23 languages, and everything that is not part of the legislation, is usually only translated into two or three languages. Also, the introduction of so-called lawyer- linguists is a fairly recent phenomenon. These lawyer-linguists form an extra layer of linguistic staff, who reread the translated versions of texts, both from a linguistic and a juridical perspective, to make sure that no mistakes were made, not linguistically, nor legally (interview with De Corte, May 14, 2010). Furthermore, it needs to be noted that the translation system of all the European institutions has been of great importance for the IT technology of automatic translation (interview with Richter, April 11, 2011). Not only do the translators have access to the Net at all times, they can also make use of the so-called translation memories. These translation

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca memories form part of a software program that stores texts and their translated versions. It is especially used for the Acquis Communautaire, of which, according to the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, all 23 translated versions form “the biggest parallel corpus, in existence” (European Commission, 2011c), not only because of the high number of languages, but also because of its size. Its functioning can be explained by comparing it to a big warehouse, as Mr. Richter explains: the translation memory is like an enormous warehouse that gathers words, sentences, paragraphs and even whole texts that have already been translated in the past. Whenever a text needs to be translated, “an automatic system is going through this warehouse, to see if it finds […] parts of the texts in the target language” (interview with Richter, April 11, 2011). If that is the case, then the system automatically translates these parts or sometimes lists possible options for certain words. The translator can concentrate then on those pieces of texts for which no suitable translation was found by the automatic system. Afterwards, he or she can verify whether the automatic translation was correct, or select the right equivalent from the various options that were listed by the system.

2.3 Future enlargements

In my bachelor paper, I investigated how real a possible future enlargement was. At that time9, candidate member states were Turkey, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) and Croatia. Potential candidate member states, those countries for which the negotiation procedure had not started yet, were Iceland, Montenegro, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia. Nowadays, the map of candidate and potential candidate members looks quite differently:

Figure 1: Candidate Members and Potential Candidate Members (European Commission, 2010b)

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca Potential candidate members are now: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, and Serbia. Apart from Turkey, the FYROM and Croatia, Iceland and Montenegro have also gained status of candidate member (European Commission, 2010b). In what follows, I will give a brief overview of what the joining of those five candidate members would entail and how it would influence the working of the interpretation and translation system of the Parliament. Also, I will look at how far advanced the process of negotiating is. Becoming member of the European Union means satisfying criteria on three different levels. These criteria are known as the criteria of Copenhagen and were set out in 1993 by the European Council in Copenhagen. The first level is of a political nature: the country has to have stable institutions and a stable legal order. It must respect human rights at all times and minorities need to be protected. The second criterion is an economic criterion declaring that only countries with a stable and functioning market economy can join. And thirdly, the criteria of Copenhagen declare that all candidate members have to adopt all the existing European rules (the Acquis Communautaire) in their own legislation10. It must also be noted that, in theory, it is not the EU’s aim to have the new member states completely adjusted to their own policy; the adjustments are supposed to be made in bilateral agreement and aim at having both parties gradually growing towards each other. However, in reality, it amounts to the member state conforming to the European conditions (Vos 2008: 85, my translation).

2.3.1 Turkey

In April 1987, Turkey stood itself up for a full membership of the European Union. In December 1999, the country was officially granted the status of candidate by the EU Helsinki Council and five years later, in October 2005, the accession negotiations with Turkey were formally opened. These negotiations entail that different so-called chapters11 were opened and investigated. The policy of Turkey on these different chapters then needed to be made conform to the policy of the European Union. Since June 2010, the twelfth chapter (food safety, veterinary and phytosanitary policy) was open for negotiations. That means that in total, 12 out of 33 chapters are opened, but only one out of 33 has been closed (European Commission, 2010c). As to when Turkey will officially receive its status of Member is unknown, but according to several analysts, this will not happen before 2015 (European Commission, 2010c).

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca If the European Union decides to accept Turkey as a member state, several consequences regarding the language policy of the European Parliament will need to be considered. First of all, it would imply the assumption of a twenty-fourth official language, namely Turkish. Over 67 million native speakers of Turkish would become part of the European Union’s language community (European Commission, 2006). Also, the Turkish alphabet would have to be accepted as a fourth official alphabet. However, this alphabet is so strongly Latin-based and therefore resembles the Latin alphabet very closely, that it might not be considered as a fourth separate alphabet. Besides Turkish, a considerable amount of the population uses Kurdish as the language of their communication, or other minority languages such as (dialects of) , Bosnian and Circassian (Lewis, 2009a). If these minority languages would be taken into account, by for instance the Intergroup for Traditional Minorities and Regional Languages, then the Arabic alphabet would have to be considered as well.

2.3.2 Croatia

Having applied for full membership as well, Croatia needs to go through the same steps as Turkey. The Croats have been a candidate member since June 2004, after applying for this status in February 2003. In October 2005, the accession negotiations were opened. Currently, all 33 chapters are opened, and 28 out of 33 chapters have already been closed again, meaning that those subjects do not need further negotiation (European Commission, 2011a). It is remarkable how quickly the negotiation processes between Croatia and the EU develop and in 2007 the European Parliament even congratulated the country with its rapid progress (European Parliament, 2007a). On the sixteenth of February 2011, Members of the European Parliament released a resolution stating that the negotiations with Croatia might be wound up in the first half of this year (Montesquieu institute, 2011). The main problems that need to be solved, before Croatia can officially join the EU, are the lingering corruption in the country and the skepticism of its population towards the Union. Once these are resolved, Croatia can join the EU and would then be the second country, after Slovenia, of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, to become member of the EU. The official language in Croatia is Croatian, a language that is spoken by 96.1% of the Croatian population (CIA, 2010). Several minority languages are spoken; 1% speaks Serbian, 2.9% speaks other and undesignated languages, including for instance Italian, Hungarian, Czech, Slovak and German. If Croatia would become the twenty-eight member of the

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca European Union, then the speaker’s community of the European official languages would enlarge with over 5 million speakers (Lewis, 2009a). Moreover, a new alphabet would have to be taken into consideration. The Gaj’s Latin alphabet, however, is a variant of the Latin alphabet and only differs from it to such a small extent, that it might not be treated as a separate alphabet. This line of reasoning would only be consistent with the fact that the alphabets used for the Slovenian language and for the Czech language12 are not considered to be different writing systems from the Latin alphabet either (Omniglot a).

2.3.3 The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia

The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, or the FYROM as it is often called in a European context, is one of the candidate member states for which negotiations have not started yet. Macedonia applied for membership in March 2004 and in December 2005, the European Council granted the country the status of candidate member (European Commission, 2010a). One of the problems that needs to be solved before negotiations can start is the so-called Macedonian-Greek conflict (Floudas, 1996). This conflict is a result of Greece’s dissatisfaction with the constitutional name of their neighbouring country, namely ‘the Republic of Macedonia’. The Greeks fear that this would imply territorial claims, on behalf of the FYROM, over a province in Greece with the same name. Therefore, they refuse to acknowledge the nationality and the language of Macedonia as being Macedonian and they only want to recognise the name ‘Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia’ (Balkan Business Insight, 2008). The language situation of Macedonia is a complex one, not only because of its numerous dialects, but also because of the political and socio-cultural connotations of the language. The CIA World Factbook states that 66.5% of the Macedonian population speaks the , the official language of the country. About a quarter of the population speaks Albanian and the rest of the Macedonians speak other minority languages, such as Turkish, Roma, Serbian, or another, unknown language (CIA, 2010). Macedonian closely resembles Bulgarian and they are mutual intelligible. It is also spoken in Greece, Albania, Bulgaria and Serbia; in the latter three countries it is recognised as a . According to the Ethnologue website (Lewis, 2009a), the total number of speakers of Macedonian, is more than 2 million. However, because the language is called ‘Slavic’ in Greece and is by some people in Bulgaria considered to be merely a Bulgarian dialect, it is difficult to establish the exact number of speakers of this language. The writing system, used

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca for this language, is an adaptation of the Cyrillic alphabet. As it is only a variant of the official Cyrillic alphabet, it probably would not be considered as a separate alphabet (Lewis, 2009a).

2.3.4 Iceland

Seeing as Iceland has already been a member of the European Free Trade Association since 1970, of the European Economic Area since 1994 and of the Schengen agreement since 2000, it was not considered a great surprise when they officially applied to become a member state on 16 July 2009. On the 27th of July, only a few days later, the European Council accepted the application and referred it to the European Commission, so that the latter could start its investigation on how ready Iceland was to join the Union. In February 2010, the Commission officially announced that it supported Iceland’s accession, after which ‘only’ the governments of the EU had to approve before the negotiations could start. In June 2010, at last, the Council officially opened the negotiations with Iceland, and about a month later, on 27 July 2010, the membership negotiations started, on the first intergovernmental conference (European Commission, 2010d). Ever since, the accession procedure has been a smooth one, compared to some of the other candidate member states’ application procedure. Surprisingly enough, Iceland has always been a euro-sceptical country, though after the financial crisis in the country in 2008, the population felt more positive towards a possible EU application, hoping that the adoption of the euro would lighten the burden of debt. However, after the eurocrisis on continental Europe, Iceland’s scepticism towards the EU rose again, which might lead to a no-vote by the population in a referendum, if the national Parliament would decide to hold one (Seychell, 2009; BBC News, 2011). If Iceland joins the European Union, the of Iceland, namely Icelandic, would have to be added to the list of official EU languages. Icelandic is a Northern Germanic language, which is closest related to Faroese, spoken on the Faroe Islands. Unlike the other North Germanic languages, it is not mutually intelligible with the mainland Scandinavian13 languages, such as Swedish, Danish or Norwegian. Neither is it mutually intelligible with that other insular Nordic language, namely Faroese. This unintelligibility is the result of major language evolutions over the past millennium, which influenced the Nordic languages but did not have any effect on Icelandic. The speakers of Icelandic are and always have been suspicious and rather negative towards linguistic influences from other languages, be it Latin, English or any other North Germanic language. That (partly) explains why, over a period of 11 centuries14, Icelandic has barely changed and why it is considered to be the most

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca archaic language of all living Germanic languages. The alphabet is Latin-based with the addition of some extra letters, such as certain vowels with diacritics, the ‘thorn’ (Þ)15 and the ‘eth’ (ð). It is spoken by about 320,000 speakers, the majority of which are inhabitants of Iceland. About 8,000 speakers of the Icelandic language live in Denmark, 5,000 speakers live in the USA, and 2,000 speakers live in . The latter are not Icelandic emigrants, unlike the Icelandic speakers living in Denmark or the USA, but they stem from a community which was founded in 1875, by Icelandic settlers (Omniglot b; CIA, 2011; Lewis, 2009b; Icelander Tours; Gimli).

2.3.5 Montenegro

In December 2008, Montenegro applied to become a member of the European Union. Two years later, in December 2010, the European Council officially confirmed that they had granted Montenegro the status of candidate member state. However, the process of submitting its application to become a candidate member state in the first place, started long before December 2008 and did not come about without any obstacles. In October 2005, the EU started negotiating for a Stabilization and Association Agreement with – what was then still – Serbia and Montenegro. These negotiations were going to take place “on the basis of a twin- track approach” (European Commission, 2011b), but failed because the Serbian government did not commit itself to the fullest. They were interrupted in May 2006 and only a couple of days later a referendum was held by the Montenegrin Parliament on the independence of Montenegro. The majority of the voters voted for the independence and in June 2006, the Montenegrin Parliament officially declared the country to be independent from its confederation – partner, Serbia. After that, the EU Council stated that they were willing to further develop relations with Montenegro and dealing with some bureaucratic formalities, Montenegro could officially apply to become a member of the EU in December 2008. No chapters have been opened or closed yet, which means that the negotiations have not started yet, but in a press release dating from March 2011, the Parliament stated that its members are happy with the decision of the Council to grant Montenegro the status of candidate member. However, they do feel that the country needs to proof its willingness to become a member of the EU, by tackling the corruption, the organized crime and the discrimination that is lingering in the country (European Commission, 2011b; Europees Parlement, 2011). Formerly being a part of ex-Yugoslavia, the language situation of Montenegro – like Macedonia’s and Croatia’s language situation – is as complex as the history of the nation.

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca According to the CIA’s World Factbook, about 5% of the population speaks Albanian, 8% speaks Bosnian and 12% speaks other minority languages such as Italian. The majority (60%) of Montenegro’s population, however, speaks Serbian, which has been the official national language of Montenegro until 2007 (CIA, 2011b). In 2007, the Montenegrin language became the sole official language of this country, even though only about 22% of the population considers it to be their mother tongue. This Montenegrin language is a variant of the Serbo- Croatian language, which also serves as a basis for the standard Croatian language, the standard and the standard . Each of these languages are mutually intelligible, and although there are several important grammatical and syntactical differences between them, all four languages were for a long period of time considered to be a common language. Nowadays, most academics still consider the languages of these Balkan states (such as Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Montenegro) to be variants of one and the same language, namely the lingua franca of former Yugoslavia. But several recent political developments in Montenegro (such as its desire to join the Union) have created the need to institutionalize its language, causing the start of a formal standardization process. However, more so than in Croatia or Macedonia, the whole language issue has been highly controversial. Montenegro is a very small state, and has only recently declared itself independent from ‘big brother’ Serbia. It is considered to be the closest relative to Serbia, and therefore a great part of the population finds it hard to accept the Montenegrin language as their own separate language (Cvetkovic, 2009).

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca 3. The use of English in the EU

When exploring whether English forms a threat for Europe’s multilingualism, it is of importance to have an overview on how advanced the spread of English actually is. In the next part, the concept of ‘English as a lingua franca’ and how far the current state of affairs on this topic has advanced will be explained, both on a worldwide level (in the first part) as on the level of the European Union (in the second part). In the third part, more information will be given on artificial languages and whether they could ever perform the role of lingua franca in the Union.

3.1 English as a lingua franca

In order to be able to fully grasp what the threat of English as a lingua franca for Europe’s multilingualism entails, it is important that the concept is explained from different angles. Not only in the field of languages in general is it considered to be one of the hottest and most important issues, it is also perceived as a topic of major significance by and for the Union. In January 2011, a rapport was published by the European Commission, an initiative stemming from the Directorate-General for Translation. Given the fact that there is no escape from globalization, the Commission mentions that “the phenomenon […] has acquired such dimensions that it cannot be ignored” (European Commission, 2011d). According to this rapport, a lingua franca is a vehicular language that serves as a means for mutual understanding between several parties who do not share the same mother tongue. The lingua franca in question could be perceived as a neutral language for both parties, or as the mother tongue of either of the parties. In other words, when two or more people do not understand each other, they will search in their repertoire for a language that they have in common, and – as already mentioned – this will almost always be English. According to de Swaan, it is the hyper central language that connects the entire global language system. One can simply not ignore the overpowering, world-dominating role that the English language is playing today. “[T]he hyper central position of English, as the pivot of the global language system, perpetuates, reinforces and spreads itself” (de Swaan 2002: 229, my translation). However, particular aspects of the English language do not completely tally with certain features that are considered to be specific for a lingua franca. The study of the Commission mentions how a lingua franca is usually characterized by a simplified structure and by what is called non-territoriality. This means that it is a neutral language, which does 21

Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca not belong to any territory. In its purest and original sense, it is supposed to serve as a so- called third space, a buffer space, as the Commission calls it, between two parties who do not understand each other, but who (are supposed to) live on equal footing (European Commission, 2011d). Juliane House, Professor Emerita of Applied at Hamburg University, states that it is a “language for communication”, not a “language for identification” (House 2003: 559-560).

3.1.1 Figures

On the 24th of February, Professor David Crystal gave a lecture on the ‘Future of Englishes’ at Ghent University16. One of his main issues, which forms a recurrent line of thoughts in his other lectures and articles on this matter, is that the exact number of English-speaking people in the world is unknown. “Languages statistics are a primitive science. [...] And when it comes to global statistics, we are in the business of informed guesswork” (Crystal 1999: 3). In other words, to give a complete and accurate description in numbers of how widely used the English language is, is impossible. Even if countries do count the number of learners or speakers of English, then usually they do not make the distinction between the different levels of English: only understanding the basics of a conversation in English, is not the same as being able to write fluently in the language. Nevertheless, as Crystal explained, people do feel the need to think in figures and numbers, so guesses about the exact number of English- speaking people, have been made. Those guesses almost always make a distinction between speakers of a language, who have it as a mother tongue, those who master it as a second language (ESL) and those who have learned it as a foreign language (EFL). According to the rapport that was published by the European Commission in January 2011, Ethnologue mentions 330 million native speakers of English, between 300 and 500 million speakers of English as a second language and between 500 million and 1 billion speakers of English as a foreign language. Only is spoken by more mother tongue speakers than English, but for the other categories (ESL and EFL), English is the unbeatable number one. The most common way to present the relations between and numbers of these three categories is via Kachru’s three circles. This figure gives a clear view of the polycentric way in which these dimensions are developing.

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca

Figure 3: The three circles of English as conceived by Kachru (European Commission 2011d: 27)

Kachru’s inner circle lists the number of speakers who have English as their mother tongue, such as the United Kingdom, the United States of America and Australia. This circle is ‘norm- providing’, which means that it is these countries and their inhabitants that set the ‘correct’ norm. The outer circle contains those speakers who have English as a second language and who ‘develop’ the norm, which means that they form their own varieties “on the basis of the conflict between linguistic norm and linguistic behaviour which characterises these communities” (European Commission 2011d: 27). The expanding circle is norm-dependent. They follow the norm as it is laid down by the inner circle and consider all deviations as mistakes. The number of speakers in this last circle is continuously expanding, while the number of speakers who are situated in the interior circle is gradually decreasing (European Commission, 2011d). However, this model has not been spared the criticism. Some say that it is outdated and cannot keep pace with the recent developments of the English language, such as influxes of immigrants. Also, it implies that the inner circle is the ‘authoritarian’ circle that still exerts more power than the other circles (European Commission, 2011d). According to David Graddol, on the other hand, a new model should be implemented. The Directorate-General for Translation puts it as follows in his rapport: [...] [N]ative speakers have lost the right to control the language and should acknowledge that “as ever increasing numbers of people learn English around the world, it is not just ‘more of the same’. There is a new model. English is no longer being learned as a 23

Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca foreign language, in recognition of the hegemonic power of native English speakers” (2011d: 19).

It belongs to everybody and to nobody at the same time and no longer embodies a single culture, the Western Judaeo-Christian culture (European Commission 2011d: 29; Graddol 2006: 19, cited in European Commission 2011d: 29). In other words, English can no longer be seen as the mother tongue of certain populations that also happens to be a language that is spoken outside of these nations. On the contrary, English does no longer belong to the native speakers solely: it serves as a lingua franca, more often used for communication between non-native speakers than between native speakers, as is illustrated by the following chart.

Figure 4: interaction between English-speaking people (European Commission 2011d: 29)

3.1.2 Competing languages as a lingua franca

According to David Crystal, the only cause for a language to become a global language is the power and prestige of the nations who speak the language. For the case of English, Crystal means both the political and military power, which has for a long time been under the control of the British Empire. Also, the Industrial Revolution had its influences, because it took place mainly in English, which again served as power for the language in the field of sciences and technology. English as a language also has a certain form of economic power (the pound and

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca the dollar, both currencies of English-speaking nations) and the cultural power of English is undeniably greater than that of any other language. However, because “the status of a language is the reflection of power” (Scholes 2010: 11), Crystal also acknowledges that in the future, other languages might defeat English in the battle of global languages. Chinese, Arabic and Spanish are all possible candidates to ‘rule’ the world one day. As Crystal points out, referring to languages that have played the role of lingua franca in the past (such as Latin, Greek, French), a language does not necessarily maintain its global dominating status forever. In other words, there is no evidence that English will be able to hold on to its current power in the future (Scholes, 2010). As for the present, there is no doubt that any other language besides English can fulfil the role of global language. With at least – according to some guesses – 500 million speakers of it, no other language even comes close. As already mentioned, English is by far most often used as means of communication between non-native speakers of the language. David Graddol’s chart shows how almost 75% of the interaction that happens in English, is communication between non-English speakers. However, it is worth considering that these figures were calculated from a western point of view. There is no doubt about it that English – above all other languages – is most often used as a lingua franca in the West-European continent. But, as pointed out by de Swaan (confer supra), in the most eastern and most southern parts of Europe - and especially among the older generations - English is in competition with, respectively, German and French. Moreover, de Swaan mentions in his book how in the language constellation of the Indian subcontinent, competes with English for the role of lingua franca. It only seems logical that in the South-American continent, Spanish (or even Portuguese) would be considered as a lingua franca, while in the Asian world Mandarin Chinese, Malay or even Tamil might play that role (Bowring, 2005).

3.1.3 Consequences

A language that is more often spoken by non-native than by native-speakers, is very likely to undergo some drastic changes. According to David Crystal, the ‘transformation’ is already so far advanced that we should speak of the different world Englishes, in the plural form. “New varieties of English (‘new Englishes’) is the inevitable result” (Scholes 2010: 1). These new varieties contain new words, idioms, pronunciations and patterns of discourse, that are clearly influenced by the mother tongue of the speaker who uses English as a second or foreign language. What remains, is “an amalgam of some sort [...], steadily increasing, as the

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca processes of globalization force us to encounter an ever-widening range of divergent linguistic inputs” (Crystal 1999: 3). Nowadays, these hybrid forms of language are still considered inferior to the standard British English (the Received Pronunciation (RP)) or to the Standardized American English (SAE) (Crystal 1999). But, as mentioned before, seeing as power and prestige are key figures in the global development and spread of a language, there is a chance that these ‘amalgams’ will in the future become as accepted and normal as the standard (British or American) English language is nowadays. This is a process for the long- term, but it is already setting in. “You can tell, because they are becoming used less self- consciously in the national press – a local word is no longer put in inverted commas, for example, or given a gloss” (Crystal 1999: 6). At the same time, while the English language is becoming more and more interspersed with exotic elements, another development in the opposite direction is taking place. The speakers of English, who use it as a second or foreign language, are gradually making their own ‘versions’ of it, but simultaneously, they are more and more confronted with the need to make themselves understandable for other non-native English speakers. In other words, the umbrella language, namely English, that is used by someone who has appropriated it to her or himself, has or will gradually become less understandable for someone from a different background who has done exactly the same. To resolve this, both speakers might fall back on what they consider as a ‘more neutral’ version of the language in order to be understood by the other party. “The desire for identity fosters increasing linguistic diversity; but the desire for mutual intelligibility, at an international level, fosters increasing stability” (Crystal 1999: 8). Crystal calls it Emerging World Standard Spoken English17, a solution that was (unconsciously) brought into effectiveness by all speakers of English, for what McArthur calls the issue of the latter-day Babel (McArthur 1998: 22, cited in Crystal 1999: 8). It is a form of English that serves as means of communication in an international setting, that has been made as ‘neutral’ as possible, by eliminating as much cultural references and nuances as possible. It has not been institutionalized yet, and is only of importance for spoken interaction. The written version of an English that has to provide reciprocal intelligibility, has already been developed: Standard English. But the global status of English as a language also has consequences for other smaller languages, Crystal explains. A lot of small languages are disappearing, and this is – for the case of North American Indian languages and Australian languages at least – partly explainable by the ever-increasing presence of English. Nevertheless, this line of thought need 26

Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca not be exaggerated, according to Crystal. The statement that “English is killing off other languages” (Crystal 1999: 5) is far too simplistic and leaves little scope for discussion. Not only is the disappearance of small languages a natural process, it is also a consequence of ‘globalization’ in general and of “the history of empires, in which the English has indeed had an unequalled, but nonetheless restricted role” (Crystal 1999: 5).

3.2 In the Union

3.2.1 Figures

Crystal’s remark on statistics, of course also counts for the number of English-speaking people within the Union. In this case, distinctions need to be made between the different levels of working knowledge of the language, between speakers of English as a first, second or foreign language, but also between the ‘common’ citizens of the European Union and between those who work in an international setting, such as the civil servants of the European Union. These differentiations are not always held into account. An additional difficulty is that most figures are not up-to-date and they are not always very accurate. Nevertheless, they give a rough sketch of the current state of affairs. According to the Eurobarometer survey from February 2006, English is without a doubt the most frequently used language within the EU. It is important however to mention that the Eurobarometer, an initiative stemming from the analysis service of the European Commission, was conducted in 2006, and only included the then 25 Member States, the current Member States Bulgaria and Romania, as well as candidate Member States Croatia and Turkey. The figures that I will use in this section, might thus not always be correct or up- to-date and do not hold into account the numbers of English-speakers from other candidate members, apart from Croatia and Turkey. The Eurobarometer mentions that English is the most widely spoken foreign language in the Union, with over 51% of the respondents of the survey using it either as a mother tongue, as a second or as a foreign language. 77% of the respondents think that English is the best language to master as a first foreign language, whereas only 33% consider French and 28% consider German to be the best first foreign language. About 13% of the respondents use English as their mother tongue, and in 19 out of the 29 countries that participated, the respondents claim that English is the most widely known second or foreign language. If the

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca model of Kachru’s three circles would be applied to English in the European Union, it would more or less look this:

51% 13%

38%

Figure 5: Kachru’s model applied on the number of English-speaking people in the European Union (European Commission 2011d: 27)

3.2.2 Competing languages as a lingua franca

Abram de Swaan (2002) explains how, after the reunification of Germany in 1990, the number of native speakers of German drastically increased in the Union. 17 million mother tongue speakers of German joined, and what was previously the main second language for Eastern Europeans, namely Russian, rapidly disappeared from the (Eastern) European language scenery and made place for German. Nowadays, Germany is the economical heart of Europe and its language has the highest number of native speakers in Europe. It comes in third in the list of languages that is most often used as lingua franca among speakers of different languages (de Swaan, 2001). French, on the other hand, used to be a bigger competitor for English. Before the accession of the United Kingdom to the European Union, everything seemed to indicate that French would once become the Union’s lingua franca. It certainly was the most important language of the Union at that time and although German had a higher number of mother tongue speakers, it was not as widely known as a second language as French. The three cities18 in which the members of the EEC gathered were partly francophone and French was considered to be an attractive and culturally prestigious language. Also, the French were very open about their endeavors to make their language the number one language of what was then the European Economic Community. The Germans, by contrast, adopted an attitude of “self-

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca restraint and even self-effacement” (de Swaan 2001: 154), frenetically avoiding to come across as the hegemony that lives off the power it once had. “In quietly opting for English throughout the post-war years, the Germans certainly helped to weaken the most privileged position of their arch-rivals on the continent, the French” (de Swaan 2001: 154).

3.2.3 Why English?

Why English has become the unofficial lingua franca of the European Union has several causes. Globally spoken, the usage of English as a lingua franca is a very recent phenomenon, but in the European Union, English gradually started dominating the language scenery, ever since the United Kingdom joined the Union in 1973, only 20 years after the founding of the European Economic Community (de Swaan, 2001). It is a phenomenon that gradually arose, and it is of course closely interwoven with the rise of English as a lingua franca on a worldwide scale. As the figures point out, the English language does not owe its status to the number of mother tongue speakers, seeing as German is spoken by 18% of the European population, according to the Eurobarometer, as opposed to merely 13% for English. It most likely owes its status of vehicular language to its global appeal and prestige. However, as already mentioned, until very recently (the early nineties), French was still a rather serious competitor of the English language. But over the last couple of decennia, different elements caused the downgrade of French. Mamadouh explains how it is not only a matter of change in the composition of the European Parliament, or of the rejuvenation of the people working for the European institutions. It also has to do with the nature of the language situation of the countries that have joined. In 1995, when Sweden, Finland and Austria joined, the negotiations mostly happened in English, which had not necessarily been the case for previous enlargements. Something similar happened when, nine years later, about ten more countries, mostly from the eastern part of Europe joined. What at first sight seemed not that important, had actually great effects, Mamadouh explains. Civil servants and the like working for those countries in the European Union, got used to working, living and communicating in English, which only increased both the status and the number of speakers of the language (interview with Mamadouh, March 22, 2011, my translation).

3.2.4 Consequences

Because of what de Swaan calls the robustness of languages, it is very unlikely that the spread of English within the Union will threaten the smaller languages of the European language

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca constellation. However, certain consequences of the rise of English on a worldwide scale, will also affect English as a lingua franca on the level of the European Union. New varieties of English are emerging amongst the civil servants of the Union in the corridors of the institutions. It is very often interspersed with French language elements, and sometimes even German elements, depending on the mother tongue of the parties who are communicating in this new variety. It overlaps to a certain extent with the phenomenon of the Eurospeak. This is a form of language, usually based on English but sometimes on French, that is punctuated with EU jargon. It can also be expected that certain elements of Crystal’s concept of Emerging World Standard Spoken English, will be recognized in the different Englishes that are spoken within the Union. Very often these Englishes are as neutral as possible, cleared of specific cultural references.

3.3 Artificial languages as a lingua franca

Although there is no denying that English has become world’s lingua franca, in the past people have looked for alternatives to fulfil this function. It is self-evident that English, just like any other language, is a natural product, not created nor produced by human hand. Because of this reason, it is not a neutral language, as explained by Virginie Mamadouh in the interview I conducted with her. The language is subtly punctuated with meaning, with cultural connotations and these cannot be neglected. David Crystal already noticed how speakers, being directly confronted with this characteristic of language, have sought for a more ‘neutral’ version of the English language, which Crystal calls the Emerging World Standard Spoken English (1999). But that does not necessarily mean that the problem of English as a language loaded with cultural references is solved. Furthermore, languages are always closely intertwined with certain ways of life and states of mind. To overcome this problem, a number of linguists have sought after ‘neutral’ solutions. They have created artificial19 languages, without any association with either a (predominant) culture, a (predominant) territory, or another (predominant) language. This tendency to construct languages started occurring more regularly in the nineteenth century, when “the utopia of a common language to promote mutual understanding and global peace largely came to the fore” (European Commission 2011d: 22). These artificial languages, when devised particularly to ameliorate neutral communication between different cultures, are also called international auxiliary languages (IAL). The French have always been advocates for the implementation and use of these IALs,

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca because it was seen as a means to block the rise of English. IALs were very often developed to avoid tensions between the European languages and to serve as a lingua franca in international communication. IALs are characterized by a simple grammar without exceptions or deviations, a recognizable vocabulary and an uncomplicated phonology. They are supposed to be rather easy to learn and are usually based on the Latin or Roman languages. Particularly because of this latter aspect, the IALs have not been spared the criticism. They are said to be too Western-European oriented and they are therefore sometimes also called Euroclones (Harrison, 1997; Harlow, 2006). Several dozens of these international auxiliary languages have been created over the past decades, but Esperanto has without a doubt become the most well-known and widely spread artificial language of all. It was created in 1887 by Lejzer Zamenhof and is, according to the Ethnologue website, spoken by about two million speakers in more than 115 countries (Lewis, 2009c). The language was officially recognized as a language by UNESCO in 1954 and ever since its popularity has increased. However, up until today, it has not been officially accepted by the European Union as a possible alternative for the multilingual language scenery. Robert Phillipson mentions in his article from 1998 on ‘globalizing English’, that it is especially adherents of the language who claim that it was never given a fair chance to prove its potential efficiency. Although not expressing his own opinion on the value of this artificial language, he does mention that it has never been seriously considered as a solution for the ‘multilingualism problems’, neither “by language specialists, [n]or by those responsible for the running of the multilingual organizations” (Phillipson 1998: 110). Mamadouh, however, mentions that experiments with Esperanto have been conducted by the language services of the European Union. It was for a brief period of time used as a relay- language, which turned out to be effective. Nevertheless, the usage of Esperanto as a relay- language was never resumed afterwards (interview with Mamadouh, March 22, 2011, my translation).

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca 4. Literature study: theoretical perspective

Although a lot of my interviewees (confer infra) deny that there is a serious problem as regards the language regime of the European Parliament, and more particularly, its capacity to absorb an unknown number of languages in the future, numerous scholars think otherwise. As mentioned in my introduction, I will to a certain extent rely on Abram de Swaan’s theory (2001) of the increase of English as a lingua franca in a particular area, and how that is very often related to an advanced form of multilingualism in that particular region. Apart from de Swaan, many other influential academics have taken an interest in this matter. However, because of the expanding and therefore variable nature of the Union, it is important to subdivide scholar’s opinions chronologically. In my bachelor paper, I chose to classify forms of critique on Europe’s language situation in two categories: criticism that was uttered before 2004, and criticism that was formed after 2004. The reason why this turned out to be an efficient way of analyzing the opinions of scholars is because the language situation of the Union before and after 2004, concerns – harshly put – two separate worlds. After 2004, the number of languages that both the translation and interpretation system had to deal with had almost doubled. It was the enlargement with the largest number of countries ever to join, which self-evidently created a lot of worries, seeing as before maximum two languages were added to the list, with each enlargement. Simply put, the enlargement of 2004 had more drastic effects on the language system of the Parliament than any other enlargement had before. However, when the addition of nine more languages later turned out to have happened with only minor surmountable obstacles, criticism was still uttered. In the second and third part of this chapter, I will, departing from the literary analysis from my previous research paper, try to give a broad overview of the main viewpoints of scholars who are specialized in these matters, both from articles published before and after 2004. However, as is the case for every analysis of academic literature on any subject, I would like to point out that the list of works on this subject cited below is not exhaustive. The number of authors who became interested in this topic at one point in their career, and decided to dedicate their attention to it, is endless.

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca 4.1 Current debate: “The more languages, the more English” (de Swaan 2001)

In his book, Words of the world. The global language system (2001), Abram de Swaan presents his theory on the multilingual language network, which he calls the ‘global language system’. He departs from the knowledge that languages are constantly competing with each other, on different levels and in an unfair way. De Swaan distinguishes three levels: (1) the hyper central and super central languages, (2) the central languages and (3) the peripheral languages. The world contains different language constellations and each of these language constellations consist of several ‘arbitrary’ languages, the peripheral languages. Such a language constellation is held together by means of a central language. All of these central languages are also connected via a super central language. The connection of all of these language groups happens by virtue of multilingual speakers who have, in their repertoire, one or more languages in common. It is a well-structured system that lives by a certain hierarchy and it can be compared to economics: languages should be considered as ‘goods’. Certain languages will be attractive to learn, to ‘buy’, while others might be passed over. This will depend on their position in the ‘global language system’. The higher a language ranks in the hierarchy of the language constellation, the easier people will want to learn it. De Swaan determines this position in the global language system on the basis of the so-called Q-value of the language in question. The Q-value of a language is the product of the proportion of those who speak it among all speakers in the constellation and the proportion of multilingual speakers whose repertoire includes the language among all multilingual speakers in the constellation (de Swaan 2001: 20-21).

Evidently, people will be more inclined to learn a language that will enlarge the Q-value of their repertoire. In other words, people want to learn that language that will enable them to speak with the largest number of people and that has the highest number of multilingual speakers. This can, under certain circumstances, lead to massive “stampede towards one language and desertions from another” (de Swaan 2001: 20). The super central languages are, according to de Swaan: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Hindi, Japanese, Malaysian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swahili. The hyper central language that connects all of these languages is English. De Swaan compares it to a solar system. The centre of this solar system is English. Apart from ‘the English sun’, there are about a dozen of other ‘language suns’, the eleven remaining languages mentioned 33

Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca above, each of them surrounded by their own planets, the central languages. These planets have satellites circling in their neighborhoods, the so-called peripheral languages. After explaining his theory more thoroughly in the first two chapters of his book, he applies it on different language constellations in the world: , Indonesia, Africa and South-Africa and the European Union. Apart from the latter, all of these language constellations are postcolonial societies in which the language of the colonizer plays a remarkable role. In India, the language of the former colonizer, namely English, upholds a precarious balance with Hindi (the most spoken language in the country) and some other indigenous languages in the south. In Indonesia, the language situation evolved differently and should be seen as the exception to the rule. The colonial language, namely Dutch disappeared completely from the stage after the independence and was strangely enough, not replaced by the Javanese language, which was the indigenous language spoken by the largest and most dominant group of people in Indonesia at that time. Instead, the Indonesian population chose to adopt an Indonesian version of the Malaysian language, which was seen as a bazaar language before the independence, only spoken by ten percent of the population. In Africa, on the contrary, independence did not have such a great effect on the language constellations of the different postcolonial societies. In general, the countries that were once ruled by either the French or the English still use the language of their former colonizer for almost all public life. Besides French or English, several indigenous African languages are used as a lingua franca in everyday life. A similar situation occurred in South-Africa. Although eleven different languages were guaranteed equality in the country’s constitution, English and to a lesser extent African, is still used as lingua franca in public life. As de Swaan puts it: “So far, much as in India, the recognition of these numerous ‘scheduled’ languages is mostly ceremonial” (de Swaan 2001: 23). The last language constellation de Swaan investigates is that of the European Union. The difference with the other examples mentioned in his book, is the so-called robustness of the languages of the EU. The fact that all of Europe’s languages are protected and safeguarded by the member states, will always impede the evolution of these languages into hybrid language forms. What most language constellations do have in common, de Swaan points out, is the rivalry between different language groups. This competition almost always hinders the language communities from accepting other alternatives than the controlling English as umbrella language. “[T]o avoid making decisions is here, much as anywhere else, the same as taking ‘non-decisions’” (Abram de Swaan 2002: 182, my translation). Yet, all of 34

Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca the language constellations praise the ideal of multilingualism and the diversity of languages. Nevertheless, in reality, the usage of one or maybe two languages is often preferred over multilingualism. In other words, the more languages are officially recognized and appointed with an equal status, the smaller the chance that they will stand firm against one ruling language, usually English, sometimes French.

4.2 Acknowledgement of the problem 4.2.1 The Union does not take the problem seriously In her article for the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, “Over the rainbow: Languages and law in the future of the European Union” (2005), Margot Horspool rightfully states that “[a]mong the many problems that have grown over the years in the European Union, the linguistic regime is often mentioned, but rarely acknowledged as a major difficulty in its structure” (Horspool 2005: 158). Even though her article was written in 2005 and the European Union now deals with 23 official languages instead of 20, her statement still stands strong. There are difficulties with the ‘linguistic regime’ and it is safe to state that the more countries will join, the more problems will arise for which a practical solution will be hard to find. Critique has been uttered from different angles, both from within the European institutions and from the ‘outside world’. Despite this, the Union hardly ever actually considers possible difficulties with the translation or interpreting system, when embarking upon negotiations to enrol new member states. The general opinion from politicians towards both systems is often: ‘Paddle your own canoe, and make it work!’, as Mr de Corte put it (interview with de Corte, May 14, 2010, my translation). It is only logical that this kind of thinking easily becomes the target of criticism. In the conclusion of her article “A failure to comply with the EU language policy: A study of the Council archives”, Lenaerts, a linguist from the University of Antwerp, decides that Regulation No. 1 has never been respected and that the “arguments to explain this are detailed, yet unsatisfactory, as they all seem to refer indirectly to a need to renegotiate the initial democratic principle of the language policy and to evaluate its practicability” (Lenaerts 2001: 240).20 In other words, even before the addition of ten more languages, there were doubts on whether the European institutions would be able to cope with the enlargement. It was feared that not only the costs would increase, but also the workload and the delays, and more importantly, there was a general consensus on the fact that Regulation No. 1 needed to be revised (Lenaerts, 2001). 35

Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca 4.2.2 Problems will arise in the future Introducing the model of “controlled full multilingualism”, has been – to a certain extent – a success and can be more or less seen as the reason for the (relatively) smooth course of the mega-enlargement (McAuliffe 2008: 809). However, doubts still exist and more and more the feeling of unease over future enlargements grows. In his article, published in 2008, Robert Phillipson says the following: “How the linguistic mosaic of Europe will evolve in the coming decades is unpredictable, but manifestly there is a need for explicit language policy formation and implementation to maintain diversity” (Phillipson 2008: 261). His main concern is the development of English as a lingua franca. He also mentions the fear of a number of academics that globalisation might turn out to be Americanisation (Bourdieu 2001, paraphrased in Phillipson 2008: 261). In this respect, he also mentions Eco’s statement that “translation is the language of Europe” (Eco 1997, paraphrased in Phillipson 2008: 261), thus affirming that English cannot play that role. Despite this fear of English taking over the language scenery of the European Union, he does mention some positive aspects, concerning the language policy of the Union. For instance, he applauds the ‘higher profile’ of multilingualism in the European Union. He says that that started to happen in 2007, when multilingualism became part of the responsibility of Commissioner Leonard Orban. However, Phillipson still feels that more needs to be done to protect the linguistic diversity. He mentions the discrepancy, existing between what the theory claims and what the practice shows. How supporting treaties and proclamations may be, in reality there is a – what he calls – laissez-faire (Phillipson 2008: 259) policy in the linguistic scenery of the European Union (Phillipson 2008).

4.2.3 Lack of clear language policy That is also one of de Swaans main issues. In his book Words of the world. The global language system (2001), de Swaan mentions how both the ‘issue of the languages’, and the costs of the whole language system are still taboo subjects, and are almost wilfully ignored. It was clearly easier for the European Union to agree upon a joint currency than on a joint language policy. Europe shows that it is united in payment, but divided in translation. But to avoid making decisions, is here, much as anywhere else, the same as taking ‘non- decisions’, and those will affect the European language system as profoundly and long- lasting as an explicit enacted regulation (Abram de Swaan 2002: 182, my translation).

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca He even goes one step further, and mentions that any form of actual ‘policy’, with regards to the language regime, is non-existent. There is an “obstinate paralysis” (Abram de Swaan 2002: 205, my translation), as he calls it, which is caused by ‘vicious cycle of voting’ (2002: 205, my translation). Virginie Mamadouh, just like Abram de Swaan, a specialist on the matter, already formed her concerns, in her 1995 book De talen in het Europees Parlement (1995). Contrary to de Swaan, she does acknowledge that there is a form of regulation, namely Regulation No. 1, but is certainly not precise or detailed enough. As mentioned in part 2.2.2.2, she stated in the interview that it is quite vague and even noncommittal. There is no clear distinction between ‘official languages’ or ‘working languages’ and nothing is mentioned on how to provide interpretation or translation. In other words, the institutions can set-up these services exactly the way they want it, Mamadouh writes in her book. “Without an adjustment of this Regulation, a lot of choices are possible” (Mamadouh 1995: 14, my translation).

4.3 Solutions offered 4.3.1 Review of the multilingualism-system Academics have also proposed solutions for the future. Arturo Tosi mentions that rather than the ‘quantity of languages’, the ‘quality of communication’ should be paid attention to (Tosi 2005). Therefore, a thorough review of the whole multilingualism-system should have happened a long time ago. However, two elements have obstructed this. Firstly, there is the aspect of the Eurospeak replacing the use of official languages, which seems to be an unstoppable process. Secondly, there is the fact that “neither professional consensus nor official concern about the reasons for this degradation” exists (Tosi 2005: 385). He concludes by suggesting that the whole system of interpretation and translation should be reviewed by language experts: “[L]anguage and communication issues should never again be addressed as mere administrative procedures; rather, decisions should be informed by scholarly discussion” (Tosi, 2005: 388).

4.3.2 One single working language

In his article “Multilingualism in the EU” (2005), Theo van Els pleads for the limitation of working languages in the EU. He says that certain arguments opposing this suggestion are, from a linguistic point of view, not valid. The most often heard argument against the

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca reduction of the number of languages used, is that this would cause disadvantages for the speakers of smaller languages. Although van Els acknowledges that this is the case, he argues that ‘sticking persistently to the current system’, will also lead to damage and disadvantages. Therefore, the debate is, one about – what he calls – “the weighing up of interests” (van Els 2005: 275). And the solution that weighs the lightest, according to van Els, is maybe also the most drastic one, namely the usage of only one single working language. This would cause an advantage for native speakers of English21, but on the other hand, it would also confront them with their language “frequently being changed in unorthodox ways” (van Els 2005: 276). It is also noteworthy that van Els emphasises the distinction that needs to be made between different ‘domains’. He states that for each of the different domains, for instance, the different European institutions, it needs to be considered whether or not “the principle of equality for all national languages as official and working languages can or should be disregarded” (van Els 2005: 276). Furthermore, he agrees with Tosi, that academic scholars need to play a part in the event of a possible revision of the language services. He claims that, although linguists have a view on this matter, it was never considered to actually listen to their linguistic arguments and get them involved.

4.3.3 Limited number of working languages Other scholars, who have offered their view on a possible solution, are Jan Fidrmuc, Victor Ginsburgh and Shlomo Weber, although they looked at the matter from an economical point of view22. One of the statements in their article “Voting on the choice of core languages in the European Union” (2009), is that, although the proposal of reducing the number of working languages in the EU might not gain immediate political support in the nearby future23, it will in the more distant future. The reason is that more and more young people will become proficient at speaking other languages than their mother tongue. Based on the results of a survey on language, they calculated which formula would cause the lowest possible rate of disenfranchisement24: using six core languages (English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Polish) as working languages. Fidrmuc et al. (2009) also note that their suggested scenarios25 would not go against the principle of the EU that says that all citizens should always be able to communicate with the Union in their own language.

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca 4.4 Is the debate exaggerated?

In the previous parts of this chapter, I have tried to give an overview of what the general critique of academics is on the debate on multilingualism. In the next part, I will shed light on another perspective in the discussion. Virginie Mamadouh is a professor at the University of Amsterdam, who specializes in political and cultural geography. She is not a linguist, but her interest in the language policy of the European Union was aroused when she engaged herself in the study of European politics. Currently, she conducts research on the social media used by the different institutions of the European Union and on how these institutions give expression to multilingualism. In 1995 she wrote De talen van het Europees Parlement, one of the most comprehensive pieces of academic literature on the topic. Ever since, she wrote several significant articles on topics related to the language policy of the European institutions and European identity. She mentions she finds the debate interesting because of the different forms of communication problems within the Union, but also because it is striking how the various language communities react differently to possible future adaptations of the language regime. Furthermore, because of her background as a geographer, Mamadouh explains that she looks at languages from a territorial and spatial viewpoint. She finds it striking how people sometimes come up with very attractive and inventive ideas, without holding into account that languages are changeable entities that cover territories. In other words, because of the geographical distribution of languages and the interaction between different languages, certain principles are simply not feasible. In her 1995 book, she utters criticism on the language policy of the European Parliament and sums up other possibilities and their advantages and disadvantages. Nevertheless, her opinions on the language regime have slightly altered since 1995. In the next part, I will discuss her ideas on issues regarding the language policy of the European Parliament on the basis of the interview I conducted with her on the 23th of March, 2011 (interview with Mamadouh, March 23, 2011).

4.4.1 Acknowledgement of the problem

One of the first issues Mamadouh mentions is the fact that the debate on the language policy of the European Parliament is only one of numerous ‘sensitive’ topics concerning communication problems within the Union. A distinction needs to be made: internal communication within the institutions or external communication with the citizens, with governments or with communities of interests, are different matters, but they are easily lumped together. The multilingualism debate that is described in this paper is, according to 39

Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca Mamadouh, a ‘hot’ issue and a much debated topic, for which no easy solution exists. She mentions that the problem goes further than simply 23 different languages that need constant interpretation and translation. The context of each language differs radically from other languages and the language itself very often has a great effect on the message that needs to be transmitted. Also, she claims that an element which is often neglected is the important difference between different varieties of one language, such as the Dutch that is spoken in Belgium and the Dutch that is spoken in the , or the English that is spoken in Scotland versus the English from Ireland. Concerning the internal communication in the institutions, Mamadouh agrees that the Parliament safeguards equality between all languages in theory, whereas in reality certain languages are used more often and more extensively than others, especially in the informal sphere. Nevertheless, according to Mamadouh, the final product, the reports and all of the important documents, are usually translated into all languages. This is the result of Regulation 1/58, a regulation she calls ‘vague’ and noncommittal (confer supra). Nevertheless, in her opinion, the ‘problem’ is situated more in the process towards the end product: negotiations, discussions and debates generally happen in one or two vehicular languages, almost always English or French. But on the other hand, Mamadouh states it is almost impossible to stop these kinds of situations from occurring: “One has to stay practical and pragmatic” (interview with Mamadouh, March 22, 2011). Even if every MEP would have an interpreter at his or her disposal at all times, then that still would not be sufficient, because one cannot expect from the interpreters to know all 23 languages, she explains. However, in her opinion, the increase in responsibilities of the European Parliament might form an even bigger challenge for the translators and interpreters than the augmentation of languages. She explains how after the Treaty of Maastricht, the Treaty of Amsterdam and more recently, the Treaty of Lisbon, the Parliament gained more power and thus became more bureaucratic. The diversity in possible subjects has increased as a result, making matters more difficult for translators and interpreters than before. Nevertheless, the Parliament has not really extended the available means and will most probably not do so in the future, Mamadouh says. That means that the language services are left to their own devices and need to rely on reorganisation methods in order to guarantee effective interpretation and translation of documents. As a result, she claims that interpreters and translators might feel as if they are not getting enough ‘breathing space’, causing them to tax themselves to the utmost. At the same time, she realises that there are still a lot of complaints about the costs of the language 40

Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca services: “It was once calculated that interpreters and translators form an annual cost of three euro per citizen. That is of course a lot, but it yields a lot as well” (interview with Mamadouh, March 22, 2011, my translation). Despite this, she mentions that MEPs are rather reluctant to search for alternatives for the current language policy, because they consider it as an immense advantage to be able to negotiate in their own language.

4.4.2 Solutions

The introduction of the relay languages as an intermediate step between two languages, has opened up a lot of new perspectives, Mamadouh states. Also, the fact that translators and interpreters are no longer obliged to translate into their mother tongue, but can now also translate into other languages, has simplified matters. But drastic adaptations of the language regime have not been considered yet. Sometimes, a Member of the Parliament chooses to propose a resolution, regarding the language regime of the Parliament, but that usually has to do with matters such as including more languages, or accepting regional languages, such as Catalan as an official language. On a different level, Mamadouh explains, there are sometimes proposals to ameliorate the organisation of the language services or to reduce costs, but those proposals are exceptional. As already mentioned, Mamadouh states that it is a luxury for the MEPs to be able to use their own language and they are generally not very willing to abandon that privilege. According to Mamadouh, the so-called ‘problems’ with regards to the rise of English are not so much obstacles that hinder the effective functioning of the language services, as much as they are political sensitivities. Therefore, a solution that entails a number of working languages for the Parliament would be almost impossible to devise in such a way that all of the member states would agree. Especially France and Germany are reluctant to accept English as the most important language of the Union, because both countries feel that their language is entitled to that status26. The countries with smaller languages, on the other hand, do not expect that their language could ever become ‘important’ enough to play the role of vehicular language. An exception to this rule is the Dutch-speaking community in Belgium: they do feel that their language might be threatened by the rise of English27. This concern has different and complicated causes: not only does the location of the European Parliament place the Dutch-speaking community in Belgium28 in an exceptional position, but history also shows that language issues have always been a delicate issue for the Flemings. Other smaller languages would not object so much to the introduction of a single working language.

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca Mamadouh states that they might even prefer this outcome to the scenario of three working languages (English, French and German), because that would mean that they would have to master three languages to the fullest, as opposed to only one.

4.4.3 English or an international auxiliary language as a lingua franca

Mamadouh is convinced that English is spoken more often now than for instance two or three years ago. She states that Abram de Swaan’s exclamation, ‘The more languages, the more English!’ (2001), is clearly proven right, when looking at the language situation in the Union. But as already mentioned, the rise of English has several causes and is rather the result of a concurrence of circumstances. She mentions the rejuvenation of the administrative staff and of MEPs and their assistants, but also a change in composition of the Parliament. Moreover, the fact that the negotiations for the enlargement in 1995 and 2004 happened in English, and not in French, was a contribution to this overwhelming power of the English language in the Union. But nevertheless, claiming that the Parliament will probably never accept English as the sole working language in the institution, Mamadouh feels that the increase of English should not be seen as a threat for Europe’s multilingualism (interview with Mamadouh, March 23, 2011). At the same time, Mamadouh admits that English has become the vehicular language in the corridors of the Parliament. This has different consequences, but one of the most important ones, is that the communication is interspersed with cultural connotations that have an effect on the contents of the speech. If English would thus be installed as the sole lingua franca of the Parliament, then it would become dangerous for non-native speakers to hold conversations in English, because it might cause too much of an influence of the English or American way of thinking on the conversation. “In a way, one could state that the multilingualism is in reality an [almost literal] expression of that diversity [of cultures], which makes it very visible” (interview with Mamadouh, March 23, 2011, my translation). Moreover, debating in a foreign language causes a state of estrangement or alienation for non-native speakers. Mamadouh explains how MEPs very often negotiate in English on a certain topic and come to a reasonable conclusion. However, when they see this same conclusion translated into their own language, they find that things did not happen how they envisaged it, after all. Despite these issues, she claims that unofficially, people no longer consider the spread of English in the Parliament’s corridors as a loss or danger for Europe’s multilingualism “[f]or the simple reason that it is a whole lot easier [a]nd it has little to do

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca with the nature of the English language itself, it is rather linked to factors such as the United States of America and globalization” (interview with Mamadouh, March 22, 2011, my translation).

4.4.4 Conclusion

Mamadouh emphasises that the accomplishments of both the translation service and the interpretation service are impressive. With the entry of new countries, more alphabets need to be held into consideration as well as languages with different structures that stem from different language families. That makes matters really difficult for the translators, she explains. Nevertheless, the linguistic staff is often a scapegoat, while they are usually under a lot of strain. Concerning the upcoming enlargements, Mamadouh is convinced that the language services will be able to cope. Turkish and Croatian are not the most complicated languages to incorporate, as opposed to languages such as Bulgarian, she explains. Also, as already mentioned, she knows from experience that an enlargement is very often accompanied by a lot of concern. And yet, each time, the language services manage to absorb the addition of new languages quite smoothly (interview with Mamadouh, March 22, 2011).

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca 5. Interview data: the gap between theory and practice

In the previous chapters, I have tried to outline what the current state of affairs is in the debate on multilingualism. I have striven to give an objective view of the different components that both have an effect on the outcome of this debate and that are affected by it. In the previous chapter, the opinions of scholars were handled with a particular focus on the critiques and the solutions they proposed to solve the alleged multilingualism-problem. In this chapter, I would like to give an overview of how this criticism is parried by practitioners, who work for the European Union. I have interviewed four people for this, and I have bundled their opinions and viewpoints in different categories, each handling aspects of the multilingualism debate that were tackled earlier in this paper. In the first subchapter, I will briefly describe the professional profiles of my interviewees and how they are engaged in this debate. Secondly, I will discuss whether or not they acknowledge the existence of a language problem in the first place. If so, I will mention the solutions that have been or should be brought into effectiveness according to them in the third subchapter. In the fourth subchapter, the viewpoints of my interviewees on English as a lingua franca will be handled. In the fifth subchapter, I will describe what developments they foresee for the future, which will lead me to some general conclusions on their opinions in the last part.

5.1 The context of the interviews

I have chosen to interview four people who because of their job have been able to follow the multilingualism debate firsthand. On the 14th of May 2010, I interviewed Fred de Corte as part of my bachelor paper. Mr. de Corte has been a translator at the European Parliament for 23 years and used to work as a conference interpreter for several years before that. His main languages are French, Italian, German, Portuguese and English. The second interview took place on the 15th of March 2011, with Janet Pitt. Ms. Pitt became the Director-General of Translation in March 2010. Before that she had already worked as the adviser of the then Director-General of Translation for six years, and as a translator for the European Parliament for 15 years. On the 22th of March 2011, I had contact with Sjef Coolegem. Mr. Coolegem has been head of the Directorate for Interpretation (the unit under the DG) since 2009. Having an economic background, he started out as employee of the Secretary General of the European Parliament in 1982. After that, he worked as a secretary for parliamentary commissions and he held several different management positions. The last interview I had took place on the 11th 44

Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca of April 2011, with Jochen Richter. Mr. Richter is Head of Unit of the central advising unit in the Directorate-General for Translation. Before that, he was the Deputy Head of Cabinet to the Commissioner for Multilingualism, under the Barroso I Commission.

5.2 Acknowledgement of the problem

It is interesting to find out that each of my interviewees, except for Mr. de Corte tends to disagree with the general consensus of the academics on the matter, namely that limits have been reached and that a revision of the language policy is advisable. All of the interviewees confirm that the mega-enlargement from 2004 was by far the biggest challenge that both the translation and interpretation services have had to face yet, but most of them do not think that similar difficulties will arise again in the future. De Corte, on the other hand, is the only practitioner who is rather firm about it. He thinks that although coping with more enlargements in the future is not impossible, it does get more difficult each time. “I believe that almost everyone has the impression that we have nearly reached the limits” (interview with de Corte, May 14, 2010, my translation). Mr. Coolegem, however, mentions that the term ‘problem’ is exaggerated. According to him, these are matters that need to be dealt with, which will also happen, but these are not insurmountable obstacles. The limits have not been reached yet, and the interpretation system is well-prepared for future enlargements. Nevertheless, he does acknowledge that the interpreters’ task is becoming get more and more difficult. Whereas in the past, knowledge of two languages was sufficient, the interpreters now need to master about five languages perfectly (interview with Coolegem, March 22, 2011, my translation). Also, and this is an aspect that was mentioned by all of the interviewees, the translators and interpreters are now, much more than before, confronted with texts or spoken language in non-native varieties of English. Ms. Pitt states that “over 50% of originals sent for translation are in English, the majority written by non-native speakers. This can be the source of major problems for translation as the quality of these texts is highly variable” (interview with Pitt, March 15, 2011). This is (among others) a result of the fact that full coverage of all the different possible language combinations (506 in total) is no longer possible. However, - although the interviewees partly acknowledge the problem but at the same time minimize the harsh judgement of some academics - they do all agree on the fact that it is a very sensitive topic. But, according to Mr. Richter, politicians are aware of the critique and Ms. Pitt claims that the debate is under discussion both internally and at an inter-institutional

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca level. It is, however, a discussion that should be solved at a political level, for instance by the Bureau29. But Richter explains that because it is such a sensitive and delicate topic, the Bureau is often reluctant to submit proposals, fearing that there would be no majority accepting the proposal in the Chamber30.

5.3 Solutions

As outlined before, the interviewees all acknowledge that the enlargements of 2004 formed a turning point. Never before did so many countries join in one go and this had drastic consequences for the language services of the Parliament. Ignoring that it happened in two snaps, Richter explains that the number of languages before and after 2004, doubled. Neither the interpretation system nor the translation system had ever before faced such a challenge and according to Mr. Richter, the “consequences in terms of complexity, in terms of internal effects, [...] [were] completely underestimated” (interview with Richter, April, 11, 2011). Nevertheless, the language services managed to cope with this increased number of languages, by introducing different measurements. Not only did both language services start to rely more on technology, Pitt and Coolegem also mention the introduction of the concept of ‘controlled full multilingualism’ (interview with Pitt, March 15, 2011; interview with Coolegem, March 22, 2011) (confer 2.2.2.3 and 2.2.2.4). This entails that full coverage of all 506 possible language combinations can no longer be guaranteed. Instead, both the translation and interpretation system started to work with relay or pivot languages, such as English, French and German. These form an intermediary step when direct translation or interpretation is impossible. Coolegem also mentions that the interpretation system introduced the concept of retour-interpretation, when Finland joined the Union in 1995. This entails that interpreters no longer need to interpret from the foreign language into their mother tongue, but that they can also interpret into a second or third language. As already mentioned before, three of the interviewees think it is unlikely that the language services of the European Parliament will ever come to face such a challenge again. They do not feel that there are major problems that might impede the functioning of the translation or interpretation systems in the future. This is why solutions entailing drastic adjustments were not mentioned. However, all of the interviewees referred to smaller measures that have been taken to help the language services function as efficiently as possible. For the translation system, for instance, a department on terminology sees to it that every word has a correct equivalent in all 23 languages. Richter explains that this is not

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca always obvious. Credit swop derivatives is an example of a word that only recently came into existence. However, it became a very important concept in the economic-political world, so correct translations in all the languages needed to be produced as quickly as possible (interview with Richter, April 11, 2011). Another measure is the extra layer of lawyer-linguists that was introduced in the translation process. They form a layer between translation and publication. They re-edit and correct the translated text before it is published. They perform this job on a twofold basis; on the one hand they check if the text makes sense on a political-juridical level and on the other hand they examine if the text is linguistically correct. Despite this measurement, Mr. de Corte still feels that an extra layer apart from the jurist-linguists could come in handy as well. This extra level of pre-editing would then come in before the text is sent off for translation (interview with de Corte, May 14, 2010, my translation). De Corte also explains how the asymmetrical translation was introduced. This means that not all texts are translated into all languages. Especially administrative texts are translated less and texts that have little to do with legislation are usually only translated into three or four languages. The legislative texts, on the other hand, are always translated into all 23 languages (interview with de Corte, May 14, 2010, my translation). Furthermore, the translation service is, on a constant basis, working to improve and develop further their technological tools that form an important part of the translation work. Also, appropriate training is provided to ensure that the staff is able to use technological aids, such as CAT- tools and translation memories (interview with Pitt, March 15, 2011). Nevertheless, both Richter and Coolegem claim that language education might form part of the solution for the future. Not only for the interpreters themselves (for whom especially education of the bigger languages is a surplus value), as Coolegem explains, but also for the citizens of the European Union. “We certainly should endeavour to teach more foreign languages than we do and also to start the language learning in schools earlier. [...] [W]e can still do a lot to make this easier” (interview with Richter, April 11, 2011). Moreover, Ms. Pitt claims that the debate on how multilingualism can be maintained with the upcoming enlargements is a very important issue for the Parliament: “Discussions are on- going regarding measures that will be required to cope with further enlargements” (interview with Pitt, March 15, 2011). At the same time, she acknowledges that it is a very sensitive subject, for which no quick and easy answer exists. Introducing the idea of a number of working languages or of ‘mutually comprehensible languages’, for instance, is already an 47

Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca extremely delicate issue for a political institution, Pitt explains (interview with Pitt, March 15, 2011).

5.4 English or an international auxiliary language as a lingua franca

Although the interviewees acknowledge that English has become more important and more widely spoken in the Union, they are all firm in their opinions about the possible status of English as the lingua franca in the Union. Not only do they consider it as a loss for Europe’s diversity, they also agree on the fact that it would go against everything Europe stands for. “I would personally be against the official adoption of a single vehicular language as this would be contrary to the whole spirit of the EU, which defends diversity in unity” (interview with Pitt, March 15, 2011). Mr. Coolegem mentions that there are different reasons for not agreeing with this potential ‘solution’: it would be undemocratic for Europe’s citizens, because it would hinder them from following the legislation process in their own language and it would cause a disadvantage for the non-native speakers of English if they would have to debate with native speakers (interview with Coolegem, March 22, 2011, my translation). For those reasons, all four interviewees state that English will under no circumstances ever become Europe’s official sole working language. Richter explains that about 46% of the European citizens only speak their mother tongue. This means that by bringing English as a lingua franca into force, almost 250 million people would not be able to “read legislation that affects them [and] have communication in a language that they understand” (interview with Richter, April 11, 2011). That would go against the freedoms as they were laid down in the Charter of Fundamental Rights, Richter explains. On a more linguistic level, other consequences entail the difficulties it causes for non- native speakers or writers. As already mentioned, the poor quality of texts written in English by non-native speakers, causes major problems for the translation services (interview with Pitt, March 15, 2011), so these problems would only increase. Similarly, non-native speakers debating in English, would “rather often [not] say what [they] want to say, but what [they] can say. So the question is, would that still put everyone on the same footing in decisions?” (interview with Richter, April 11, 2011). Richter explains that already now the English that can be overheard in the corridors of the Parliament, is much more an instance of globish than of a standard variety of English, such as RP or SAE. By forcing all Members of the European Parliament to speak and write in English (sometimes against their will), this situation would only deteriorate.

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca Nevertheless, most of the interviewees do admit that unofficially English has already become the lingua franca of the European Parliament. It has therefore become almost a perquisite to have a good knowledge of English, when applying for a job in the European Union. But that does not mean that this world language will ever become the sole lingua franca of the Union. Nor will any artificial language, for that matter, Richter says. He claims the main argument of supporters of (for instance) Esperanto, namely that it is a neutral language as opposed to English, won’t wash: Is there anything such as a neutral language? Because language is about emotions: you love, live and die in your language, you dream in your language. [...] I have never come to that point to understand that a language can be without emotions and therefore neutral, which is what they say for Esperanto (interview with Richter, April 11, 2011).

Moreover, Richter explains, if a project such as introducing Esperanto as a lingua franca, would be brought into effectiveness in the European Union or Parliament, it would take at least another generation before speakers would master Esperanto to that extent that they can use it for debate or negotiations. Also, a whole new set of words, specific for the European legislation would have to be developed. According to Mr. Richter, a country that will join the Union starts to prepare (in terms of vocabulary) for the accession, about two years in advance. Linguists and translators translate the Acquis and very often cooperate with the national institution for language, to create new words that did not exist in their language and to form equivalents for the Eurospeak. In other words, if Esperanto would be accepted as sole working language of the EU, linguists would have to create an entire set of neologies. Each neologism would then have to be accepted by every language community, which would involve a very bureaucratic, long-winded process.

5.5 Future perspectives

As already mentioned, it was striking that only Mr. de Corte had a rather pessimistic view on the future of the language services in the European Parliament. He thinks coping with more languages in the future is not impossible, but does get more difficult with every new enlargement. The tenor of the interviews with the other ‘practitioners’ was more optimistic and in a way even defensive. Mr. Coolegem mentions that the interpretation service is well- prepared for Turkey and Croatia joining the Union and that there are already interpreters learning Icelandic and some of them already master Serbian. Although he admits that interpreters will have to rely to great extent on retour-interpretation, Coolegem is convinced 49

Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca that the interpretation system can manage the addition of languages of candidate member states. As for the translation service, Ms. Pitt brings across the same message. There are already Croatian translators and on the level of technology, the translators can cope. However, financial and infrastructural problems will need to be solved at a political level, Pitt explains. Mr. Richter agrees with her, and emphasises that the technological devices used by the translators are advancing drastically. According to him, the translation technology will improve to such an extent that in the future, it will become possible to make a distinction between those texts that are translated by the computer but still need revision from a human translator, and those texts that do not need this extra control, because the automatic translation is sufficient enough to understand the core of the text. On the level of enlargements, Richter feels that Turkish might soon become an official language of the European Union as well. He explains that if the conflict between the northern and southern part of will be solved, the Turkish community might ask for the recognition of their language as second official language of Cyprus, in return for coming to a settlement. If that would be the case, then the other member states will most probably accept this. Similarly, Richter feels that if more Balkan countries will join the Union, they will presumably all ask for recognition of their own language, even if some of these languages were historically not all existing. For political reasons, the Council and the different member states would accept this as well. In this respect, it is interesting to mention that is the only member state of the European Union whose official language is not recognised as one of the official languages of the European Union. Luxembourg has simply never asked for the recognition of Luxembourgian and uses French and German instead. However, if in the future they would demand that their language would become one of the official languages of the EU, then this would probably not be denied. Concerning the future of English in the European Union, Richter states that matters are uncertain: Are the Chinese in such a strong position that it almost becomes an unavoidable issue that we all speak to a certain extent Chinese? I don’t know, but I wouldn’t exclude it. So, I think we should not be so decided that we will keep control over the rest of the world forever, with this strong notion of English (interview with Richter, April 11, 2011).

5.6 Conclusion

It is safe to state that the interviewees all agree on one issue: English will not be considered as a solution for the multilingualism debate in the nearby future. The idea of one working

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca language in the European Union goes against everything the European Union stands for. Nevertheless, most interviews made clear that English (and to a certain extent also French) is already the unofficial vehicular language of the European Parliament. Concerning the ability of the language services of the Parliament to cope with possible threats to Europe’s multilingualism, imposed by future enlargements, the opinions of the interviewees differed. Mr. de Corte claimed that limits have nearly been reached and that some sort of revision of both the interpretation and translation system needs to be considered. Mr. Coolegem is less concerned. He mentions that the interpretation service is indeed dealing with some issues that might form an obstacle for the efficient functioning of the interpretation service, but nevertheless, these issues are considered problems that can and will be solved. Although he acknowledges that the interpreters’ task becomes more difficult each time a new country enters in the EU, he is convinced that the current system is working fine. Other systems, such as the radial system, would not be as efficient, Coolegem explains, because they entail that almost all interpretation happens via a pivot language or via retour interpretation. That would cause a diminution in quality of the interpreted speech. In the current system, pivot languages or retour interpretation are only used when no direct interpretation is possible. Ms. Pitt mentions that although the translators are not concerned about what will happen if more countries join the Union, there has always been a latent fear of total privatisation, ever since she joined the Parliament in 1976. However, according to her, this fear is not justified. Mr. Richter, by contrast, finds the whole debate almost irrelevant. He mentions that the enlargement in 2004 created a very political and sensitive discussion. The consequences of this mega-enlargement were completely underestimated on different levels, Richter explains, but there is no use in wondering at this stage whether the Parliament went too far by accepting all languages as equal in the first place. “This looks a bit like a ‘foul’ in sports, which is not allowed. You shouldn’t kick after, it is unfair” (interview with Richter, April 11, 2011). Europe as a political body has dealt with different problems over the years, but instead of looking back and wondering whether the right decisions have been made in the past, it is better to look to the future and find solutions to the problems. Also, Richter says, if the idea of multilingualism would be abandoned, then what would be the alternative? We have simply said in the beginning, “every language is the same” and nobody had any thoughts at the time of [the] enlargement [in 2004] to say, “now it’s time to think differently”. Because everybody was aware that, when you start this discussion, the question is when to end and where to end it (interview with Richter, April 11, 2011). 51

Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca It is like opening the box of Pandora, according to Richter. Abandoning the current regime of multilingualism would lead to numerous discussions on a possible alternative, for which no unequivocal outcome would exist. One sole working language, such as English or Esperanto would never be accepted because of all the reasons mentioned above. But if the Parliament were to adopt a language regime that entails a limited number of working languages, then what criteria would be used to decide which languages are granted that privileged status and which languages are not? “So, better leave it as it is and hold on to the multilingualism” (interview with Richter, April 11, 2011).

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca 6. Discussion: future developments

6.1 Different working languages

It is self-evident that if a language policy of different working languages would be installed, then English, French and German would most probably be the selected languages. Polish, Spanish and Italian would also be considered as options and if the conflict in Cyprus would be solved, then Turkish might even be seen as a possible working language31. However, because such a decision would have to be taken by unanimity, it would be preceded by numerous negotiations and discussions32. Nevertheless and although a lot of the academics suggested that the implementation of different working languages might form a solution for the multilingualism debate, both the interviewees and de Swaan find it very implausible that such an alternative would ever be considered by the different governments of the European Parliament. The interviewees explain how it would not only be opposed to the European Parliament’s idea of ‘unity in diversity’; it would also prevent the European citizens from accessing European law in their mother tongue. Moreover, it would mean a limitation of potential Members of the Parliament, as they would be obliged to master at least one of the working languages to full extent. It would also cause too much of an advantage for native speakers of English, when debating or negotiating33. In other words, bringing the model of a limited number of working languages into effectiveness would undermine the democratic nature of the European Parliament. Furthermore, such an agreement can simply not be reached under the current circumstances, according to de Swaan. As already mentioned, a vicious cycle would occur, which de Swaan calls a ‘latent cycle of voting’ (de Swaan 2002: 205, my translation). In principle, most countries would support proposals to limit the number of working languages to reduce costs and enhance efficiency. The only countries that would oppose this suggestion are the countries whose languages would not be included in this model of a limited number of working languages. However, de Swaan explains, after several rounds of talks and voting, the last proposal would entail only one, two or three working languages. All countries, except for those whose languages would enjoy the privilege of being included in this last model, would vote against this proposal. A counterproposal would then be submitted, implying that all languages should be used. Only the countries whose languages ‘survived’ the previous round of voting would be pro. The other countries would vote against, leading negotiations on this topic back to square one. 53

Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca This latent cycle of voting explains the paralysis, the inability of the Union to tackle the language issue. Not any solution for the language problem is stable enough, in that sense that it would win from the alternative suggestions that were put to the vote (de Swaan 2002: 205, my translation).

De Swaan explains how three assumptions form the basis of this line of reasoning: every Member State prefers a language regime in which its own language is attributed the status of full working language; every Member State prefers a language regime with less languages than one with a lot of languages; and the languages with the lowest Q-value will be the first to be nominated for abolition (de Swaan 2002).

6.2 English as a lingua franca

It is obvious that De Swaan’s line of reasoning with regards to the model of a limited number of working languages, also applies to the potential model of one working language. It is very likely that this proposal would be dismissed in favour of either equality between all languages, or the model of three working languages. But as explained in part 6.1, this last model, although very feasible according to de Swaan, would never be accepted: the English- French-German-model would, despite votes from Germany, Austria and Luxembourg, be replaced by an Anglo-French language regime (the current situation in the Commission). This model would then be repudiated by the Parliament in favour of the ‘English-only’ model (with votes from the French and Belgians against), “with the well-known, paradoxical end result: the usage of the language of each country” (de Swaan 2002: 209, my translation). Nevertheless, this does not alter the fact that English is still the most-widely spoken language within the corridors of the European Parliament. The language might never receive official recognition as the Union’s most important language, it is certain that unofficially more and more people are willing to admit that English is the ‘hyper central’ language of the EU and of the world (de Swaan 2001). As explained above, different elements are at the basis of this (rather recent) phenomenon, and its consequences should not be underestimated. Crystal (1999) explains that the English used by non-native speakers will be more neutral and more culture-specific than the Received Pronunciation of native speakers. It will be more culture-specific in the sense that it will be used more often by people from different cultures and different linguistic backgrounds, which will inevitably have an influence on their variety of the English language. At the same time – and particularly in international settings – (non- native) speakers of the English language will become more and more aware of their tendency

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca to interlard their speech with culture-specific references and will seek for a more neutral version of English, in order to enhance mutual understanding among non-native speakers. This phenomenon will probably develop further, as time goes by, and might lead to the rise of what Crystal calls the Emerging World Standard Spoken English. This would be a variety of the English language that no longer belongs to native speakers, but is seen and used as a vehicular language for communication throughout the world. This might eventually lead to a diglossic language situation in the European Union34, and even in the world. On a micro level, the rise of English in the European Parliament, albeit that it happens unofficially, also has several consequences. Seeing as the European Union could almost be considered as a micro version of the (macro) global language constellation35, the consequences of the increase of the English language on both levels can be compared. The Emerging World Standard Spoken English finds its equivalent in the so-called phenomenon of Eurospeak, the language typical for the European institutions, which is a mixture of French and English, punctuated with EU-jargon. But the written language of the European Union is equally influenced by the rise of English: as pointed out by some of the interviewees, the texts that are sent off to the translation departments are very often written in an English of poor quality, by non-native speakers of the language. Similarly, interpreters are more often confronted with speech in English uttered by non-native speakers, which makes the English speech a lot less intelligible for interpreters who are trained to interpret a standard form of English.

6.3 Maintenance of controlled full multilingualism

It is clear that for various reasons that are outlined above, the European Parliament will (most probably) never adopt a language regime that entails either a limited number of working languages or one working language only. Although unofficially English (and to a lesser extent French) has already become the working language of the European Parliament, the Parliament will in all likelihood hold on the model of controlled full multilingualism as long as possible. As explained before, it is the model that is most true to the democratic nature of the Parliament and that, at the same time, is most effective in reducing costs, without a loss of quality in the work performed by both the translation and the interpretation service. Although academics fear that this model will not be apt to cope with future enlargements, the practitioners think otherwise. They claim that whatever problems might be caused by the addition of more languages in the future, solutions will be sought after and will be found, to

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca ensure that the language services can keep performing the task they are designed to. Moreover, most of the criticism uttered by the academics dates from before 2004 and was formed out of concern of what this mega-enlargement would mean for the linguistic services. But, as Mr. Richter points out, the enlargements that are about to happen, will not be of the same dimension as the mega-enlargement of 2004. In other words, the language services will have more time to prepare for the addition of fewer languages than was the case in 2004. Also, Ms. Mamadouh notes that the countries that will join in the nearby future, have languages that will not form great difficulties for the interpretation and translation service to include36. As concerns the future perspectives on a long-term basis, it is difficult to predict whether the current language policy of ‘controlled full multilingualism’ will stand firm. Five countries are candidate member state, and four countries are potential candidate member state. On behalf of the Centre for European Policy Studies, however, Emerson et al. (2006)37 have calculated that if all countries that want to join the Union (in the long or short term) or that might want to in the future, would actually become a member, this would make a Union of 42 member states38, with at least 35 different languages39. However, as already mentioned, it is unlikely that more than two countries would join at the same time, which leaves the language services of the European Parliament time to prepare for the addition of new languages. Nevertheless, it is impossible to guarantee that the model of ‘controlled full multilingualism’ would persist in the extreme case of dealing with (at least) 35 different languages. But it is alarming that in their report on the ‘absorption capacity’ of the EU, the Advisory Council on International Affairs (2010) makes clear that if future enlargements would cause major difficulties for the language services, these services would be obliged40 to find adequate solutions, whatever the circumstances: [I]nstitutional problems, in so far as they exist, must not be used as an excuse to refrain from further enlargement. If the Union thinks enlargement is desirable or necessary it must resolve any such problems. Whether the Union should enlarge further or not is primarily a political question that should not be subordinated to institutional and organisational questions, which can in principle be resolved (AIV 2010: 42).

6.4 The European Union will further develop its diglossic language situation

As matters are evolving now, a situation of diglossia occurs in the European institutions of the Union: the national language of (each of) the member states coexists with English. Charles Ferguson (1959) introduced the term to refer to the usage of different variants of one and the 56

Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca same language for different domains. Later, the definition of diglossia was expanded by Joshua Fishman (Lubliner 2002), who also included situations in which two unrelated languages are used for different domains. It is self-evident that for the case of the European Union, the broader meaning of the word diglossia should be considered. In the case of the European Union, there is clearly already a situation of diglossia in the European institutions, which corresponds to de Swaan’s third and fourth level of communication in the Union (confer 2.1): English is used as a vehicular language between speakers of different language communities, as a language of the internal bureaucracy and for informal discussions and negotiations. The different national languages of each member state are used in the formal and public communication of the Union, or when all parties have the same mother tongue. However, both de Swaan (2001) and Juliane House (2003) mention that diglossia is the current language situation of Europe’s civil society as well. “English for various ‘pockets of expertise’ and non-private communication on the one hand, and national and local varieties for affective, identificatory purposes on the other hand” (House 2003: 561). This particularly counts for those member states with smaller languages: given that most of the English television programs and movies are subtitled instead of dubbed, and given that the majority of the popular culture originates in either the US or the UK, youngsters in those countries actually grow up with this diglossic language situation. In other words, English is gradually become the lingua franca of Europe in different domains (such as popular culture, science, technology and even higher education in some cases), while the national languages play the role of ‘home language’. The cause for this diglossic language situation should be partially sought in the robustness of the European languages, as explained before. Because of this feature, these languages will never change into a pidgin language. De Swaan explains how the national language more and more often functions as the indigenous and home language, whereas English functions as the language of communication with strangers, the latter being the appropriate language for formal occasions, the first for informal, everyday speech. Of course, de Swaan mentions, the border between these two functions is not as clear-cut as described above, but judging by the proliferation of learners of English, de Swaan claims that this diglossic balance will not very soon cease to exist. English is used by European citizens for international communication, when traveling, in science and technology and when doing business. These domains will very likely only keep expanding in the future, and combined with the influence of globalization, this will cause English to become more and more 57

Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca important. Nonetheless, and mainly because of the robustness of European languages, the national languages will probably keep controlling most (national) areas of society. In short, “people will just have to learn to live with both the English language as with their indigenous language, and they will have to try to reach a workable division between both the languages” (de Swaan 2002: 228, my translation). Consequences of this phenomenon can be linked to David Crystal’s ideas on the Emerging World Standard Spoken English. Because the English language has become the vehicular language of so many non-native speakers, it becomes more culture-specific. In international settings particularly, it becomes more neutral at the same time. It also assumes an aspect of non-territoriality: it is the ‘world’ version of the English language and thus no longer ‘belongs’ to the British or the Americans or other language communities that have English as a mother tongue. Because of this aspect, English is no longer associated with the English culture, as opposed to how French is associated with the French or German with the German culture and history. In that sense, the concern of some academics (such as Mamadouh) that English is not a neutral language and might therefore influence the ‘European’ way of thinking41 with certain culture-specific views on life, probably needs to be qualified.

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca 7. Concluding remarks

This paper dealt with the language regime of the European Parliament and whether or not it can uphold full multilingualism, while English is the ever-increasing lingua franca and while joining countries keep demanding the official recognition of their national languages. Multilingualism, it was argued in the second chapter, is deeply rooted in the Union’s foundations, despite absence of concrete official documents that regulate its implementation. Also, due to the increasing number of member states and the potential language combinations this results in, the Parliament has had to abandon its premise of full multilingualism and has instead adopted a language regime of ‘controlled full multilingualism’. This turned out to be effective, but with nine more countries wanting to join the Union, only the future can tell if this controlled full multilingualism will survive the addition of these extra languages. The third chapter investigated the extent to which the English language has spread, worldwide and in the European Union. At least one and a half billion people in the world have some knowledge of the English language and about 51% of the European citizens master it. Because of the fact that is more often spoken as a vehicular language than as a national language, it has assumed the feature of non-territoriality: it no longer belongs to the native speakers of English and is no longer associated with countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Australia or Canada. No other language is as widely-spread as English and it is without a doubt the hyper central language of the world and the lingua franca of the Union. Other languages, such as French and the neutral artificial language Esperanto, have also striven to play this role; nevertheless, English has shattered its competitors and is, albeit not official, clearly the Union’s lingua franca. The fourth chapter offered a theoretical perspective on the multilingualism debate. Abram de Swaan proved that if more languages are granted an official status, people will more easily fall back on English, because the diversity of languages impedes effective and mutually understandable communication among citizens and civil servants. In addition, other academics denounce the language policy of the Parliament and claim that the problems that will arise in the future need to be solved by means of a revision of the language regime. They propose to either install a limited number of working languages or to accept the dominant nature of the English language, by introducing it as the Union’s official sole working language. However, not all academics have such a negative opinion on the language situation of the Parliament: Virginie Mamadouh pointed out that the language services have been able

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca to overcome every problem they were confronted with in the past and she is convinced they can cope with the enlargements that will happen in the nearby future. Nevertheless, she mentions that the linguistic staff might need more ‘breathing space’ and that it must not be forgotten that, despite the pressure they are daily confronted with, interpreters and translators perform a highly necessary and excellent job. The next chapter of this paper juxtaposed the opinions of the scholars with the viewpoints of practitioners. Four interviews in particular, led to some important findings with regards to the academic critique. All of the interviewees acknowledge that English has become the Union’s unofficial vehicular language, but in spite of this, they were convinced that the Parliament will never accept this as an official solution for the multilingualism debate. More particularly, they did not want to recognise the seriousness of the issue and the fact that solutions need to be found. The practitioners mentioned that dealing with this amount of languages has become more difficult than before (when there were less official languages), but for all potential obstacles, it was argued, a solution can and will be found. In other words, the interviewees agreed that none of the solutions proposed by the scholars will ever be brought into effectiveness, because this would not be in line with the character of the European Parliament. Concerning future developments, the practitioners almost all agreed that the language services can cope with more languages and that even if major problems would arise, these would have to be dealt with on a political level. In the discussion in chapter six, four possible hypotheses for the future were discussed, holding into account all of the information gathered in the previous parts. It was made clear that, for various reasons, the introduction of one working language as an alternative for the policy of multilingualism would never be accepted, nor would the introduction of a model with a limited number of working languages. The regime of ‘controlled full multilingualism’, it was argued, will be retained for as long as possible. It was also stated that the language services will be able to cope with enlargements in the nearby future, though the outcome on the long-term remains uncertain. As concerns the rise of English as the unofficial lingua franca, Mamadouh made clear that this is a development the MEPs no longer regret. On a macro level, the rise and spread of English involves that a disglossic language situation throughout Europe, which will perpetuate in the future. The national language of each member state is used for everyday national life; English, on the other hand, will become the dominant language on an international level and in different important domains of public life.

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca In other words, neither the rise of English, nor the future enlargements impose a threat on the Parliament’s multilingualism, or at least not on an official level: both phenomena will never compel the Parliament to abandon its tenacity towards the Union’s linguistic diversity, but on an informal level, beyond the official control of the Parliament, the English language is the paramount lingua franca. With at least 15 more countries that are in the possibility to once join the Union, bringing with them a dozen more official languages, it is certain that English will only strengthen its position. The language services will most likely overcome every obstacle that will cross their way in the future, and even more so, they are obliged to do so, because administrative problems do not form a reason for the Union to refrain from accepting more candidate member states. In any case, the diglossic language situation of Europe is an established fact, even though it is uncertain whether the Parliament will be able to uphold its multilingualism in the long-term. In that respect, investigating what the consequences of this European diglossia will be, both for the English language, as for the language knowledge of the European citizens, might yield interesting results. It can be expected, as Crystal predicts, that a new form of English will come into force. This language might be perceived as the ‘European language’, a more neutral form of English. Concerning this Emerging World Standard Spoken English, it is worth investigating what the exact characteristics of this language would be and to what extent a standardization process of this variety would be desirable.

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca

Notes

1 Although Martin Wooding could not find the time to give a personal interview, he was kind enough to send me a written document with useful information on both the translation and interpretation system of the European Parliament and how they uphold multilingualism. 2 For an elaborate explanation of these reasons, confer 3.2.2 and 3.2.3 3 At that time, the member states were Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, which made Dutch, French, German and Italian the ‘official languages’ of the EEC. 4 The highest political body of the European Parliament, which lays down the rules for the Parliament. According to the website of the European Parliament, the Bureau is responsible for deciding on the preliminary draft budget, and for administrative and organisational matters. 5 Mega-enlargement’ is a term, coined by Karen McAuliffe, in her article “Enlargement at the European Court of Justice: Law, Language and Translation”, from 2008. 6 23 x 22 = 506 7 The introduction of the relay-system, however, happened already in 1995, when Finnish and Swedish became official members, because of the then experienced difficulties of finding linguistic staff capable of translating or interpreting those languages. 8 The most common pivot language is English, then comes French and only rarely is German used. 9 June 2010 10 This is what happens when ‘chapters’ are opened and closed. (confer infra) 11 The chapters stand for the different domain policies, for instance Health Protection, Financial Services, Agriculture, Intellectual Property and so on. 12 Both of them are also very strongly Latin-based, using the basic Latin set, combined with diacritics. 13 The Nordic languages are divided into the mainland Scandinavian languages (Swedish, Danish, Norwegian) and the insular Nordic languages (Icelandic and Faroese). 14 Since the country was first settled. 15 The thorn is a letter, originating from the old runic alphabet, the alphabet that was used by different Germanic languages, before the Latin alphabet was adopted. 16 The lecture was organised by the English department of the Ghent university. 17 However, this variety has not been standardized yet. 18 Brussels, Strasbourg and Luxembourg. 19 The option of using Latin as a lingua franca was at one point also under serious consideration. However, it was feared that, because of the connotation with the Catholic Faith, this solution would not be accepted by all Member States (interview with Mamadouh, March 22, 2011, my translation). 20 Although this is research done on documents of the European Council, this line of reasoning can – to a considerable extent – be considered true for the European Parliament; the language policy of the European Union concerns all European institutions. 21 It is certain that if this model of monolingualism would be brought into effectiveness, English would be the most obvious choice to use as working language. 22 All three of them are specialized in political economy. 23 The article was published in 2009. 24 In this sense, disenfranchisement is used to depict the extent to which speakers (of especially smaller languages) would feel being deprived of their rights to communicate in their own language with the EU. 25 At one point, they also talk about having three or four core languages, this would cause a higher rate of disenfranchisement, however. 26 For different reasons, as already mentioned in part 3.2.2 and 3.2.3 27 This fear does not confine itself to international settings, such as the European Parliament, for that matter. Mamadouh also mentions that in the media and on an educational level, the rise of English is clearly perceptible. The Dutch-speaking community in Belgium, more so than the Dutch from the Netherlands, always had the tendency to protect its language against this ‘ever-increasing domination’ of the English language. 28 As opposed to the Dutch from the Netherlands, or the Estonians, who also speak a ‘small’ language. 29 This is the highest political body of the European Parliament, in charge of regulating administrative matters in the Parliament. 30 Concerning this topic, and to prove his point, Mr. Richter explained how in the past, the Bureau once submitted a proposal to abandon the translation of the documents which record and transcribe everything that has been said during certain plenary sittings. These documents account for 15% of the annual translation volume and it would have made a big difference if they no longer had to be translated into all 23 official languages.

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Nevertheless, the majority in the Chamber dismissed this proposal, because politicians claimed that it was too important for the functioning of the House (interview with Richter, April 11, 2011). 31 Because of the amount of Turkish speaking people. 32 In this respect, Mr. Richter explains how embarking on these discussion is like opening Pandora’s box. There is no end to it: if the Parliament were to accept English, French and German as official working languages, then the Slavic language family would be left out. So perhaps Danish would have to be included as well. And, considering the size of this member state, Spanish might have to be included as well, but then why not Italian or Polish? And if Polish would be included, then why not Romanian? In other words: “[I]s the size of a country or the number of mother tongue-speakers a good condition? What are the elements to distinguish and to say: ‘Here we do a cut and those languages are considered to be in a different basket.’?” (interview with Richter, April 11, 2011). 33 In this respect, Mamadouh mentions how in 1972, when Denmark became a member state, the Danish delegation proposed a remarkable solution for this potential problem. They were in favour of the introduction of two working languages, namely English and French, but to compensate for the advantage this would create for the French and English native speakers, they proposed that the French would only be allowed to speak English, and conversely, the English would only be allowed to speak French. For obvious reasons, however, this proposal was not accepted. 34 Part 6.4 elaborates on this hypothesis. 35 One of which the languages are robust and protected, however. 36 As opposed to languages such as Finnish and Bulgarian, that were rather difficult to incorporate. 37 This study is not outdated, because candidate Member States Bulgaria and Romania were already considered as actual Member States. 38 Emerson et al. calculated that the current 27 Member States would be completed by “[t]he three advanced West European democracies (, Iceland and ), all of which could easily pass into the EU if they wished”; by “[t]he seven Balkan states (Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Albania, and presumably Kosovo) which have received the Thessaloniki commitments from the EU”; by Turkey, Ukraine and Moldova and by Georgia and Armenia (Emerson et al. 2006: 12). 39 This calculation of the number of languages that could potentially be added to the list, does not hold into account the Letzebuergesch language, (Luxembourg is the only country that has not asked for the recognition of their language) nor important regional languages, such as Catalonian or Basque. 40 The question presents itself whether this fact is still in line with the Parliament’s democratic nature, but this is of course a whole other discussion. 41 If there even is such a thing as a ‘European way of thinking’.

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca 8. Bibliography

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca 9. Appendices

9.1 Interview with the head of the Directorate-General of translation

Ms. Pitt – 15th of March 2011 -Could you give some general (background) information on what it is that you do as a job? I have a university degree in French and German. I joined the European Parliament as a translator in 1976. In 1991 I became advisor to the Director (subsequently Director-General) of Translation. In 1997 I joined the Private Office of Parliament's Secretary-General as his advisor on personnel policy. In 2005 I became Director of Staff Administration and, in March last year, I was appointed Director-General of Translation.

-Could you briefly explain what the language policy of the European institutions is, and more particularly of the Parliament? The European Parliament upholds the principle of full multilingualism, designed to protect the EU's cultural and linguistic diversity. All EU citizens should have access, in their language, to all documents relating to Parliament's role as co-legislator and budgetary authority. DG Translation thus plays a crucial role in ensuring the legitimacy and transparency of the EU's legislative and budgetary process.

-In 2007, 2 new languages were added to the list, and 3 years earlier, in 2004, about 10 new languages were added. Was the translation system well prepared to cope with that? And if so, what changes were made to cope with this enlargement and addition of new languages? In 2004, 10 new languages were added and in 2007, two new languages. This was a major challenge for the translation service, both in terms of absorbing a large number of new colleagues and also technically. The major change that was introduced was the notion of 'full controlled multilingualism': controlled in the sense that it was not possible, mainly because of the non-existent market, to expect all language units to be able to translate directly from all other official languages. In practice, this means that we have so-called relay or pivot languages - currently English, French and German but in some cases also Spanish and Italian - which are used when a given unit is unable to translate directly from a particular language (for example, if the Estonian Unit has no-one who can translate from Greek, they will wait for the designated relay language version). The relay language units thus come under additional time pressure because they know that for certain texts colleagues in other units are waiting for their translation.

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca -There are 5 candidate members states now and 4 potential candidate member states, so the translation system will, in a nearby future, have to cope with more languages than the current 23 languages. Do you feel as if it is able to do that? This is a subject which is under discussion both internally and at inter-institutional level and which is of course a sensitive one. The European Parliament does already have a small number of Croatian-language staff because we have to prepare for the moment when Croatia will send observers (i.e. for the period between the signing of the accession agreement and the date of actual accession).

-Are you aware of or involved with the problems a future enlargement might cause the translation system of the European institutions? Problems on a financial, (infra)structural, practical, ... level. It is clear that future enlargements could raise all the issues you mention. From an IT point of view, we can cope; the financial and infrastructural questions will have to be dealt with at a political level, with factual input from the language services.

-Are those problems already sensible in your daily work life? Do you feel as if limits have been reached? Since we are financed from public funds, we are very aware of the need to be as efficient as possible in terms of human and other resources and major efforts are currently being made in this area to improve what is already a very good level of efficiency. I would not go so far as to say that limits have been reached.

-Do your colleagues share this feeling? What is the general feeling among the translators? Translators are aware of the pressure to maximise efficiency and are concerned at the potential impact on quality, a concern that I share. This is something we are monitoring closely. On the other hand, the European Parliament is one of the best places in the world to work for someone who likes translating.

-Have there already been made efforts to come up with a solution, according to your knowledge? Discussions are on-going regarding measures that will be required to cope with further enlargements. As regards improving efficiency, we are, for example, seeking to harmonise working methods and to provide appropriate training so as to ensure optimal use of CAT tools by all staff.

-What could then be a possible solution, according to your opinion?

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca Some of the other institutions apply the notion of 'working languages'. The EP does not do so, for the reasons outlined above. Various proposals could be considered - not translating all documents or not translating them into all languages; introducing the idea of 'mutually- comprehensible languages' - but this issue is extremely sensitive for a political institution.

-In 2004, one of the solutions was the introduction of the translation procedure via relay- languages. Could the relay-system on a larger scale form a possible solution now? Such a relay system would be inevitable.

-What would you think of the English-as-a-lingua-franca solution? I would personally be against the official adoption of a single vehicular language as this would be contrary to the whole spirit of the EU, which defends diversity in unity. In my opinion we cannot require candidates for election to the EP to be linguists. And under no circumstances could we expect EU citizens to read EU legislation in a language other than their own. So in-house, in practice, colleagues tend to communicate in English or French; outside this cannot be the case.

-The solution of English as a lingua franca might cause disadvantages for non-native speakers of English. Also, the quality of the written English might deteriorate if it is used by non-native speakers and as a lingua franca in the institutions. This might then lead to the introduction of an extra layer of ‘editors’ to control the text before it is published. What do you think about that? Do the disadvantages of English as a lingua franca weigh up to the advantages? We are in practice already in a situation where over 50% of originals sent for translation are in English, the majority written by non-native speakers. This can be the source of major problems for translation as the quality of these texts is highly variable. However, we could not publish everything in English for the reasons mentioned above.

-Do you feel as if the translators fear for what will happen if more countries keep joining the EU? Not really, although the fear of total privatisation has been present ever since I joined the EP 35 years ago; I do not think the fear is justified.

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca 9.2 Interview with the head of Unit for Multilingualism

Mr. Richter – 11th of April 2011 -Could you give me some general (background) information on what it is that you do as a job? Have you always had this job? How exactly are you involved in this matter? Well, it is a very touchy issue, and I have seen it from various sides, because I was working for probably the only and one Commissioner for Multilingualism, because I don’t think this will happen again, for various reasons. But this was before I rejoined the Parliament and now I am dealing with language issues again. So, it’s interesting to see it from a political side and now from a more practical side. I am head of unit of a central advising unit in the DG Translation in the Parliament. We are on the one hand dealing with all sorts of performance statistics, we try to elaborate whether our processes and whether our cost structure is most efficient, which becomes ever more important. We are secondly looking after a quality insurance system, that across the various functions within the DG translation ensures that we look appropriately to quality of the different texts. And thirdly, we are dealing with communication, since we are reshaping the surfaces quite radically and that needs to be accompanied by communication because you meet obviously some resistance. Change is never something people like. And the fourth element lies more outside the court business and that is under the heading of inter-institutional cooperation. The EU institutions and beyond the EU, there is a strong network of communication and collaboration between all translation services. This involves, at international level, the UN services, agencies, the African Union, and you name it. Because we are all facing similar problems or challenges, to put it positively and therefore we have a good network of exchange, meeting regularly, joint actions,... in training, in professional tools, in IT developments, and other things.

-Could you briefly explain what the language policy of the European institutions is and more particularly of the Parliament? It’s all based on the famous Regulation 1, ’58, which was the ever first adopted regulation of the Community after it was created, setting a rather impressive signal to put all the languages at the same footing. So, there is no difference between the today 23 official languages, with one exception. I’ll go one step back in history: Before the EU was created, we were just 6 founding member states and four languages. Before the EU was created by the Treaty of Rome, French was pretty much predominant in the internal discussions, in the internal system, and particularly as a legal language. And apparently, at that time, there was a quasi agreement that French should become the “langue fait seul foi” which means that whenever there is any divergence in language, they would fall back to the French language version. But Belgium voiced concern, which raised then interest by others and therefore this agreement was made, back in ’57, which was then translated in Regulation 1, ’58. This regulation states that every language is the same. Easy to do when there are only 4 languages, a bit more complex when you had in the meantime then a growing number of languages, until this really bigger 72

Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca enlargement in 2004, when we had 11 languages and then all of the sudden, we had 20 languages. And today, 23. Nevertheless, the system still works, despite all the concerns you hear here and there. On the other hand, one has to be realistic. In the beginning, when we had only 11 languages, we had 110 possible language combinations, which meant that, at that moment, we could translate any original text into any language, by direct link translation. Because the coverage in the different language units, was as wide enough to cover all the 11 languages. Today, there are 23 languages and 506 combinations, because there is the exponential effect: by adding one language, it always has to be multiplied by (for the moment) 23, and you get a knock-on effect. So, we can no longer ensure that we have somebody who speaks or understands at the same time Maltese and, for instance, Portuguese. This meant that, in 2004, we had to create a so-called system of pivot-languages, which are the three main working languages, English, French and German. The drafting today, happens in Parliament, to about 56% in English, about 12% in French, 6-7% in German and then we go down to very small numbers for other languages. Even though, the European Parliament, by division of the different members, is differently composed than those drafting language numbers. We started from Regulation 1 - ’58, being the basis, which means that Parliamentarians, for obvious reasons, in the Chambers, speak their mother tongue and in relation with their constituents, but in reality, when it comes down to negotiations and corridor discussions, they often use English as the joint language of understanding, and that in an increasing trend. So, that is a bit the current situation. The official language policy, is nothing different than in any of the other institutions and that means that we are – for good reasons – obliged to translate any document, that is particularly of legislative nature or that will be published, into all the 23 languages. The Irish language, and to a certain extent, the Maltese language, have a derogation, which means that certain documents are not translated. For the Maltese, this is almost ended: there are only very few exceptions. For the Irish, the derogation that was granted, has just been prolonged, and then we will decide, in the future, when the next prolongation is ending, whether or not we have the capacity and if Ireland has had the chance to make the necessary efforts, so that we have an appropriate number of translators and interpreters and also lawyer-linguists to verify the texts.

-And there are already translators present for the Croatian language? Yes, we have already a small group of Croatian colleagues here, who are now first translating texts that could be of interest for the incoming observers, or Members to Parliament, whenever negotiation that are that much closed that we can say when could be the entry date of Croatia as a full member. And then you have a transition period until the next full elections. And in that interim period, those members would be observers, and they are obviously learning the highly technical environment in which we are working. This is something that often astonishes particularly young translators, when they are coming from the university to see how much technology is used today.

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca -Do you feel as if a future enlargement might cause problems to the translation system of the European institutions? Problems on a financial, (infra)structural, practical, ... level. Well, it was certainly the biggest challenge when the enlargement took place in 2004, with adding, in one go, 9 languages. We have never seen that before, because enlargements so far only added maximum two languages. Even when Finland, Sweden and Austria joined, the Austrians only had a protocol agreement, so that certain specific Austrian words that are related to agricultural products, are written in the footnotes of the German versions. So, maximum only 2 languages, and then in 2004, 9 languages. The challenges that we faced, with the addition in 2004, was that realistically, to keep up the whole system as it was working in the past, we would have to almost double the size of the translation services. If you consider that in Parliament, every 6th staff member is working on languages, out of the total number of administrative staff, it was impossible – like in the Commission - to simply double the services at the time. We were allowed in 2004, much less staff than you would mathematically add. Which meant that we had to make tremendous efforts to use more technology, etcetera. In the Commission they decided to have a demand strategy to limit the lengths of documents. The Parliament has had internal discussions to which extent we can outsource more and hopefully be more cost efficient, but then certain document types, according to our internal rules, may not be externalized, because legislative documents are considered to be too complex to be outsourced to external contractors. And that was the real challenge. Now, what does this mean for the future? It is very difficult to say how countries that are coming in, over the next decade, would behave in relation to their language. My personal feeling is that probably none of the Balkan countries will abstain from asking that their language is recognised as an official language, for political reasons. How we handle it internally, is something that is openly not very much debated but internally looked after with great care. And it’s a highly delicate question. But, to put the marker somewhere differently, two events could already make a difference, before any member state enters. There is one member state whose language is not recognised, because the member state has not asked for recognition of its language, and that is Luxembourg, they are using French or German. The Luxembourgish language has never been recognised as an official languages, because they never asked for it and they have been, so far wise or reluctant enough not to ask for recognition. On the other hand, if we would have a settlement on Cyprus, between the northern and southern part, then we would probably have, that is at least the assumption that many people have today, in a very short period of time, Turkish as an official language. Because those, close on to the process of negotiations, assume that the price that the Turkish community will ask for coming to a settlement, is probably to enshrine that besides Greek, Turkish will be the second recognised official language for the country. And I cannot see, politically, if that would be the case, that this reunited Cyprus would ask for the recognition of Turkish, that member states would dismiss this. Regulation 1 – ’58 defines what an official language is, namely that is must be recognised in the constitution of the member state in question (which is the reason why the regional languages in Spain are not recognised as official languages, because they are not mentioned in the constitution). A second condition, besides recognition in the Constitution, is that when a member state asks for recognising its language or languages, the Council has to approve this 74

Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca by unanimity. So, one single hand up, saying no, and it’s lost. This has never happened so far, but this in combination with what I explained about the cost pressure, from 2004, that the services cannot grow forever, makes it obviously rather delicate. The second issue behind this, in relation to future enlargements, which would concern the Balkan countries, is obviously a rather sensitive point. That is the question whether the various languages, that were historically not all existing, are different languages or similar languages that would not necessarily mean that they should be distinct in the same way than you distinct between the other languages. And that is a very tricky discussion. But, like I said, for political reasons, any of those countries that would join, whenever that is the case would ask for recognition of their language, and then it’s another debate what that would mean for our internal discussion.

-The Parliament would probably never consider to use on English as a lingua franca to avoid problems? Well, that is a recurring debate. I had a wonderful discussion on this, 3 years ago, with the representative of Esperanto in Germany and then the Chief Economist of die Deutsche Bank was there to propose English as a lingua franca and I, for obvious reasons, was happily defending multilingualism. The first reason is very pragmatic: everybody would have to learn English at a level that you could really negotiate because, if you walk through the corridors here, and you listen at what people speak, it is more what linguists would call ‘globish’. That is a reduced set of words which has a result that you rather often don’t say what you want to say, but what you can say. So the question is, would that still put everyone on the same footing in decisions? The second reason, is that today, 46% of the European population only speaks their mother tongue. So you would deprive almost half of the 500 million people to read legislation that affects them, to have communication in a language that they understand. And that is certainly not in line with our other freedoms as set down in the Charter of Fundamental Rights. And a third point, is a much more profound argument, that goes back to our principal motto ‘unity in diversity’. Language is culture, is identity, is personal feelings. I am well-aware that particularly the Americans look at us and say: “You must be crazy.” But on the other hand, recently the US has become increasingly Hispanic and a lot is already displayed in Hispanic, and whole areas function in parallel in Spanish, so the story is not that easy. I personally don’t see it happen. We certainly should endeavour to teach more foreign languages than we do and certainly starting earlier also the language learning in schools. Also preparing youngsters to make better use of their language abilities. But I am also conscious of the fact that when you don’t have the exposure on an everyday basis, it is a different story to keep up with various languages. If you are, on the other hand, pushed to use various languages throughout the day, it is not a problem. But if you only have it twice a week, for one hour and afterwards you go into your own community, than it becomes a different story. But we can still do a lot to make this easier.

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca -You mentioned Esperanto and some academics claim that it was never considered as a proper solution, even though it is a neutral language, more so than English. Do you think that artificial languages might in any way be considered as an alternative? That is a very interesting point because that was exactly the argument of that Esperanto representative in that discussion, saying “Well, this is a neutral language.” And I said, “Is there anything such as a neutral language?” Because language is about emotions: you love, live and die in your language, you dream in your language. Maybe you have experienced what it means if your master a language for the first time in such a way that you don’t realise anymore that you are translating and try to understand “what does this mean in my own language?” You start using a foreign language as a reflex language and have discussions about the latest film you saw last night or about how you felt this morning. This makes such a huge difference, to have the first tricky discussion or negotiating or even fight in another language. To jump over that barrier... I have never come to that point to understand that a language can be without emotions and therefore neutral, which is what they say for Esperanto. That is the first point. The second point, - which was my greatest success in that discussion, he admitted in the end – is that, even if we were to introduce such a project, leave alone that in the meantime many more people will have come to know some basic English, it would take at least another generation, before, across the board, everybody would master that language. And then remains the last point, and this is the most tricky point. It would be sufficient for communication, but not if you consider that before a county joins the Union, we start more than 2 years earlier, to prepare. They start translating the acquis and they often have to sit together with their national institution for language, whatever that is, to create words that don’t exist in their language. To give a very practical example, ‘credit swop derigatives’ is a word that 5 years ago, nobody knew. Today, people who are in some way linked to the economic world or to the European institutions, can spell this word and we have now found equivalents in most of the languages. This is a construction, caused by new economical developments, for which certain languages simply did not have a word. An even more drastic example: the buzzword for the moment, with relation to the future of Europe and the Euro, is ‘economic governance’. ‘Governance’ can mean a lot of things and there were a lot of hectic discussions on how to translate ‘economic governance’ into German and certain political people said: “Don’t translate this into ‘wirtschaftslenkung’.” Which means ‘steering economic into a certain direction’. This was politically completely unacceptable, so for the time being, this word ‘economic governance’, is in some texts not translated. And now everybody can think what he or she wants to read into this. So you can imagine that for a language like Esperanto, that has never come across legal language as we use it, on an everyday basis, would have to develop a whole set of words, and with set, I am probably talking about a couple of hundreds words, on which then, let’s say, 23 language communities would have to agree that this remains to bring across the same meaning. Another wonderful example that shows the complexity of this business, is the “and/or”-issue. When we run into the final negotiations and we sometimes cannot agree on the conditionality of various factors that play a role, the English language has a wonderful way out. You say “and-slash-or”, which is possible because the English ‘and’ can have both meanings, either to look at the 2 parameters in conjunction or to say, “it could be either of the two”. This “and/or” does not work in 76

Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca German, nor in French, because the nature of “und” and “oder” or of “et” and “ou” have completely different and clear-cut meanings. So you can imagine that translators are lost. Then, sometimes, lawyer-linguists have to help, because they have been in negotiations, they have heard the political debate behind this and sometimes find ways to translate it in such a manner that at least the Court could not decide that there is a difference.

-A similar example is that of Herman Van Rompuy and how there was a lot of discussion in the Dutch media, on whether to call him ‘voorzitter’ or ‘president’, because there is a whole different nuance in these words. Absolutely, that is the reason why we have in the meantime a whole department on terminology, that does nothing else than looking after terminology questions that rise throughout the process of translation and try to find comparable words in all of the 23 different languages. It is a very tricky task and highly educated people work on it.

-About a month ago, I went to a lecture of professor David Crystal, on the different World Englishes and the rise of English as a lingua franca. His main tenor was that we should not worry so much about the rise of English. We should let matters evolve naturally, as long as we understand each other. But perhaps the matters that are dealt with in the Parliament are too delicate? My former Commissioner always said, and I think rightly so, “English or Globish as a communication language is a prerequisite today for, in principal, everybody. And we should make a lot more efforts so that more people speak, or at least understand this language. But, like you said, whenever things boil down to negotiation or legislation, then things become more complex and probably matters are too complex and too sensitive to use English. A second aspect is, can we say how the world will look like when you are my age? Are the Chinese in such a strong position that it almost becomes an unavoidable issue that we all speak to a certain extent Chinese? I don’t know, but I wouldn’t exclude it. So, I think we should not be so decided that we will keep control over the rest of the world forever, with this strong notion of English. Because we also control somehow the debate. Leave alone what will happen the next decades with a continent like Africa. It’s difficult to say.

-I know that the translation system of the Parliament has achieved a lot in the area of IT and computer-based translation. So, that is something that no one worries about? Could you perhaps tell me some more about that? As many other institutions, we are working with so-called ‘translation memories’. That means that you store the original text and the 23 translation versions, of the texts that have already been translated, verified and published. And we have been doing this for a very long time, even though not all languages have been doing this since the beginning. But for instance, all languages have had to translate the acquis, so even the newer languages have this already. There is almost nothing, where at least bits and pieces have not been used in a different, 77

Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca earlier text. So, you should see this as a huge warehouse. And whenever someone starts to translate, an automatic system is going through this warehouse, to see if it finds a sentence, a paragraph, or even whole parts of the texts in the target language in which it needs to be translated. But then you have another interesting discussion, which is more emotional to translators. In the old days, a translator has a printed sheet, a white sheet and a couple of dictionaries to work with. And that was the world of translation. Later came the dictaphones, in which they talked while someone was typing it. But today, the person gets a mixmax of a text, where he or she is already getting parts of the text translated and sometimes even with various options. And then the person goes through the text, to verify whether the text proposed or the various options, meets the original, to see if it matches in the whole context, and even to almost only translate the text for which no match is found. In principal, we have to types of translators, the typical translators, but also people who are called ‘revisers’. And they go through the texts, independent from how the translation came about. Certain texts are reread by a second person to see if that person understands exactly the same by reading the translation against the original. But with an ever more increasing volume of translations, a system like that is indispensable. You might have yourself once used google translate or things like that, which sometimes delivers a not too bad result, but this system functions at a higher level, but it also automizes part of the translation. A second technological innovation is the following: machines like google translate, that are translating texts, are advancing drastically. Many private companies are investing a lot of money in automatic translation. I have an IT-background, so I am convinced that we will never be able to fully superside a translator by a machine, but I am convinced that over the years, we will come to make a clear distinction between texts that are of such a nature that a human being has to intervene and texts where we would only have to understand the contents and then get an automatic translation so that you have a good grasp of what the text means. Where the line is, is very difficult to say. It could also be that – and this probably when I am no longer in profession – that certain texts for which you don’t have to have the highest quality standard, would be translated by a machine and then somebody would go through the text to make sure that the inner logic is still there. So, those are two things that are actually happening now. And those are often inter-institutional arrangements, because you want to gain the knowledge from various texts that are on the same issue but that have been elaborated at different sides. For example, the Commission is elaborating the original text, the Council is than coming in with its amendments, the Parliament is writing amendments, the Court might have a court case on this, so there might be a court ruling, ... So, it’s all the same text but looked at from different sides and any translation from somewhere else can be of help to this. And these things even happen at an international level.

-Is it correct to state that possible infrastructural and financial problems need to be solved on a level, higher than that of the translators and interpreters, or even higher than yours? That that are problems that rather need to be solved on a political level?

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca Yes, any decision that goes beyond the current framework, would have to be sanctioned by politicians. I am talking about decisions in the range of a limited use of languages or, for example, a restriction to a certain set of languages in meetings - which I can’t see, but nothing, in principal is excluded – or, for example allowing automatic translation for certain internal texts. To give you a concrete example: about 15% of our annual translation volume, which is close to 1.8 million pages across the 23 languages, so about 300.000 pages concern the so-called ‘creux’. That is the extended summary of the sittings, where every word that is said by every member in the plenary is written down. This document is translated for different reasons: certain members might, even months later, be interested to know what a colleague from a different political spectrum has said about the same issue, or they sometimes need it for press releases at the home front, ... So 300.000 pages out of 1.8 million, that is not nothing. A couple of years ago, the Bureau, which is the highest political body, decided to abandon the translation of this document and there were thoughts about only making it available upon request, or parts of it. But basically they said: “We cannot afford to translate this document anymore.” The Bureau is a body that normally takes decisions being rather certain that they will get a majority for it, because these are decisions that formally need to be voted by the Chamber. And the majority simply dismissed this proposal, even though it sounds rather logical. But everybody said: “This is a political document, it summarizes our discussions in plenary, it might be of whatever use, but it is one of our core documents in the functioning of the House.” So, it was completely dismissed. And you can imagine that any discussion that we have now, about the cost pressure, or the pressure of having less staff and being more efficient, it will always be a very delicate question to propose any change to a still fully-fledged multilingual system. What I think will be the crunch question over the next decades of years is, how to maintain the system sustainable. What could be the parameters to, on the one hand, have a stable cost-situation and at the same time, knowing that one or the other language will be added over the time? Now, I can’t go into further detail because then I would enter into political speculation and that is something I’d rather not do in something that might end up in the public. It is even internally already too delicate to discuss. But that is what we are asked to do. That is why performance indicators are so important in the meantime, to think about what other strategic options , to face something that looks like squaring the circle. Increasing the output, but decreasing the resources that you have to produce.

-So the Members of the Parliament also find this really important. Because I heard that if the Members were to decrease the costs, they would rather abolish the move to Strasbourg every month, than restricting the use of languages in the Parliament. Yes, well the whole Strasbourg-discussion is of course very much en vogue, I am not sure what the outcome will be. There was a decision in the previous last Chamber to change the sitting arrangements, which has now created an action by France, going to the Court and claiming that this is no longer in line with the Treaty provisions. So, I don’t know what the outcome will be, we’ll see. But quite honestly, 200.000 is a minor amount, if you consider that we consume, out of the 100 billion the Union approximately has per year for all its 79

Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca dealing, only 1%. So 1 billion is the cost for the whole language service globally, so also including interpretation. This sounds like a hilarious number, but it’s not, because for you and me, individually, it means 2.5 euro per year. And I think you pay more for a cup of coffee, even in Ghent. My foreign Commissioner always said: “This is the cost for democracy that we have to accept.” I am fairly relaxed about what the outcome will be in the whole Strasbourg-discussion, but it is definitely not the solution of the problem of a sustainable multilingualism. The 200.000 that might be saved, will be eaten up in seconds by adding another language, which could happen as early as Croatia joining the Union.

-I am also investigating English as a lingua franca and more particularly, if there is a link between the increase of English, in especially informal talk, and the increase of languages in the Union. What is your opinion on this matter? Yes, it is a natural reaction, when you have a multilingual system, where you can no longer ensure that people understand each other across languages. It is similar to what happens in Belgium, where the one side speaks Dutch and the other French, while still understanding each other. In the old days, you still had, for instance Germans who had a very good French knowledge, so it was no problem if both sides spoke French, or if at least the Germans understood French well enough and vice versa. With 10 new languages from middle and eastern Europe, of a complete different structure and of different language families also, so that you can’t even make a link with your own set of languages, it was a natural reaction to use English. But like we said, discussions are then often limited and when it comes down to the real details, you then often require again translation or interpretation. And a third element we must not forget about, is that the quality of originals, being drafted in English, has dramatically gone down. So the Commission has already a fully-fletched editing service that does nothing else than looking at originals before they go into translation in order to read that text and find out if there is something that cannot be understood. And unfortunately, there are very often whole parts of which they don’t know what it means and what the author is trying to say. So, you can imagine that if someone then needs to translate this to Dutch or Finnish, or whatever the language might be, that person is even more lost. We are thinking ourselves about creating an editing service, and of course there are pros and cons but we are facing exactly the same phenomenon that texts are of a quality that makes translation often even more awkward than easy.

-Do you think the whole debate and controversy about this issue exaggerated? Well, it was a very political and emotional decision to have the enlargement in 2004, as it happened. But similarly as we encounter now certain effects, like the crisis in Greece, like the persisting problems we still face with some of the new member states in terms of respect of rule and law and how to apply anti-corruption laws, etcetera, in that same way, people were probably underestimating the consequences of adding so much languages in one go. If we forget that it happened in two snaps, the point is that before 2004 and after the number of languages doubled. The consequences in terms of complexity, in terms of the internal effects, 80

Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca (like for instance, using more and more English, and often bad English) were completely underestimated. And that obviously created discussion like: “Have we gone too far? Is this still logical or not?, ...” This looks a bit like a “foul” in sports, which is not allowed. You shouldn’t kick after, it is unfair. And I find any such discussion, like “Was it a mistake to allow the Irish to have their Gaelic, and the Maltese their Maltese?, ...” almost irrelevant, because it is like saying that one country is more important than the other. And that certainly does not match the system of equality of treatment and equality of any member state, which is something that we have enshrined at various places in the Treaty and certainly in the way this house is composed by its 736 members. There are elements of equalizing, and you probably don’t want to have a situation where you have, for instance, 100 German members in the Chamber and 1 single Luxembourgish. No, you have a capping at the highest end and a beefing up on the lower end and in the same way I see a system of multilingualism to equalize that. We have simply said in the beginning, “every language is the same” and nobody had any thoughts at the time of enlargement to say, “now, it’s time to think differently”. Because everybody was aware that, when you start this discussion, the question is when to end and where to end it. And, honestly, what would be the alternative? Informally, we have three working languages, English, French and German. The German is almost marginalized. What is next? What to add? To leave it with those languages? Then you would not include any of the Slavic languages. If you add a Slavic language, which one? And how do you deal then with member states that might be of equal size? And is the size of a country or the number of mother tongue-speakers a good condition? What are the elements to distinguish and to say: “Here we do a cut and those languages are considered to be in a different basket.”? Nobody has found that key yet and, believe me, we have thought about these questions at various times. We thought, is it maybe ‘the three’, plus Spanish? And if Spanish, why not Italian? And if it is Polish, why not Romanian? And if you are in that basket, than the Dutch would stand up and demand that we looked at the figures. Etcetera. We felt that whoever wants to endeavour this discussion, this is like opening the Pandora box which is something you can’t close anymore. So, better leave it as it is and hold on to the multilingualism.

9.3 Interview with the head of the Directorate Interpretation

Mr. Coolegem – 22th of March 2011 -Kunt u wat algemene achtergrondinformatie geven over uw job? Ik heb economie gestudeerd in Tilburg, daarna bij een bank gewerkt en in 1982 ben ik begonnen bij het Secretariaat-Generaal van het Europees Parlement bij het DG Voorlichting. Daarna heb ik vooral gewerkt als secretaris van parlementaire commissies. Vervolgens heb ik enkele managementposten bekleed en ben nu sinds 2009 directeur Vertolking. Dat is directoraat A. Verder is er een directoraat B voor de organisatie en planning en zijn er enkele horizontale diensten. Het geheel staat onder leiding van een directeur-generaal.

-Zou u kort kunnen uitleggen wat het taalbeleid van de Europese instellingen juist is, en meer bepaald van het Europees Parlement? 81

Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca Het taalbeleid van de Europese Unie is vastgelegd in Verordening nr. 1 van de Raad. Die Verordening bepaalt dat alle officiële talen van de lidstaten ook officiële talen zijn van de Unie. Voor wat het Europees Parlement betreft is in het intern reglement vastgelegd dat ieder Parlementslid een van de officiële talen van de Unie kan gebruiken om zich in een vergadering uit te drukken of om die taal schriftelijk te gebruiken. Het Parlement heeft voorts vastgesteld dat het talenregiem gekenmerkt moet worden door “beheerste meertaligheid”. Dat houdt in dat alle talen gelijke rechten hebben, maar dat wel naar efficiëntie en doelmatigheid gekeken moet worden zonder aan de rechten van de leden te tornen.

-In 2007, werden 2 nieuwe talen toegevoegd aan de lijst, en 3 jaar eerder, in 2004, kwamen er al 10 talen bij. Was het tolkensysteem goed voorbereid op die verandering? En welke aanpassingen werden doorgevoerd om hiermee te kunnen omgaan? Het was onmogelijk om daarop goed voorbereid te zijn. Het kost immers jaren voor men een taal dermate goed beheerst dat men uit die taal naar de moedertaal kan tolken. Toen Finland toetrad heeft men het systeem van het “retour” ingevoerd. Dat houdt in dat een tolk niet alleen vanuit een vreemde taal naar zijn moedertaal tolkt, maar ook vanuit zijn moedertaal naar een andere taal die hij heel goed beheerst. Meestal is die taal het Engels, Frans of Duits. De Finse tolken gingen toen de Finse parlementsleden vertolken naar het Engels. Sinds de toetredingen van 2004 en ook voor het Bulgaars en Roemeens geldt nu dat een aantal tolken van de toegetreden landen vanuit hun moedertaal naar het Engels, Frans of Duits tolken. De collega- tolken tolken dan vanuit die taal naar hun moedertaal. Intussen hebben echter vele tolken een van de talen van de nieuwe lidstaten geleerd en zijn we niet meer uitsluitend afhankelijk van “retours”.

-Nu zijn er 5 kandidaat lidstaat en 4 potentiële kandidaat lidstaten, dus in de toekomst zal het Europees Parlement met nog meer dan de huidige 23 talen te maken krijgen. Denkt u dat het dat aankan? We zijn inmiddels goed voorbereid voor het Turks en het Kroatisch. Enkele tolken leren IJslands. We hebben ook al enkele mensen die Servisch beheersen. Het zal duidelijk zijn dat we voor de nieuwe talen ook gedeeltelijk op “retours” aangewezen zullen zijn. Maar grosse mode kunnen we die uitbreidingen aan.

-Bent u er zich van bewust of bent u misschien betrokken bij de problemen die kunnen veroorzaakt worden door een toekomstige uitbreiding van de EU, op het niveau van het tolkensysteem? Problemen op het financieel, (infra)structureel, praktisch, … gebied? Voor wat de financiën betreft: natuurlijk kost het recruteren van tolken, vertalers en juri- linguists geld. Maar de parlementsleden hebben allemaal dezelfde rechten, dus moet die prijs betaald worden. Problemen zijn er om opgelost te worden: we zullen verder veel werk blijven maken van het verzorgen van taalonderwijs voor onze tolken en hen in staat stellen om hun talenkennis bij te houden. De meest moderne vergaderzalen hebben nu 27 cabines. Als het 82

Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca aantal talen daar boven gaat uitstijgen moeten er aanvullende maatregelen worden gezocht, zoals het bijplaatsen van tolkencabines in de vergaderzalen.

-Zijn die problemen al voelbaar in uw dagelijkse werkleven? Hebt u het gevoel dat de grenzen bereikt zijn? Ik zou het geen problemen willen noemen. Het zijn zaken die aangepakt moeten worden en die ook aangepakt worden. De tolken- en vertaaldiensten van de instellingen bereiden er zich op voor: men bezoekt de kandidaat-lidstaten en spreekt daar met de ministeries van onderwijs inzake het onderwijs in vreemde talen. Voor het eigen personeel en voor de free-lance tolken waarvan men regelmatig gebruikt maakt wordt training georganiseerd of betaald. De grenzen zijn zeker nog niet bereikt. Maar het is belangrijk dat duidelijk is dat het talenregiem een politieke kwestie is. De politiek neemt de besluiten en de ambtelijke diensten hebben die maar uit te voeren.

-En wat is het algemene gevoel hieromtrent onder de tolken? Dat het werk wel steeds moeilijker wordt. De “gemiddelde” tolk beheerst vijf talen. Naarmate er meer officiële talen bij komen stijgt het aantal mogelijke taalcombinaties en wordt het steeds moeilijker om al die taalcombinaties af te dekken. Van de huidige 506 talencombinaties wordt ca.40% rechtstreeks afgedekt. De rest gaat via een pivot of een retour. Tijdens de plenaire vergaderingen in Straatsburg wordt ca. 27% van de tijd Engels gesproken, Duits, Frans en Pools volgen met ca. 12, 11 en 10%. Een taal als het Ests of het Maltees wordt minder dan 1% van de tijd gesproken. Het is dus van belang dat de tolken vooral de grote talen leren. Voor de echt kleine talen ligt het meer voor de hand om te werken met retours. Het is immers niet nodig dat veel Nederlandse tolken, om maar een voorbeeld te noemen, bepaalde kleine talen leren. Alle tolken moeten wel de grote talen kennen want die worden het meeste gesproken.

-Heeft men al inspanningen gedaan om tot een oplossing te komen, naar uw weten? Nogmaals: we zien het niet als een probleem. Zoals ik al zei wordt er veel aan training gedaan (talencursussen, verblijf in het land waarvan men de taal wil leren, ondersteuning van tolkenopleidingen in de lidstaten, aanwezigheid bij tolkenexamens op universiteiten, etc.)

-Wat zou een mogelijke oplossing kunnen zijn, volgens u? Het huidige systeem doet het prima. Andere systemen, zoals het radiaalsysteem, zijn zeker denkbaar, maar zullen altijd inboeten aan kwaliteit van de te leveren tolkprestaties. Immers in een radiaalsysteem wordt vrijwel alles via een pivot of retour vertolkt, terwijl dat nu alleen gebeurt indien een rechtstreekse vertolking niet mogelijk is.

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca -Wat zou u vinden van de oplossing die het ‘Engels-als-een-lingua-franca’ voorstelt? Dat is om diverse redenen ongewenst: 1) het geeft de Engelstalige leden een duidelijk voordeel ten opzichte van alle andere voor wie het Engels een vreemde taal is. Die anderen kunnen zich dus minder goed uitdrukken. Dat is niet acceptabel. 2) In het Europees Parlement houdt men zich bezig met wetgeving die later in alle lidstaten zal gelden. Het zou volstrekt ondemokratisch zijn als de burger het wetgevingsproces niet in zijn eigen taal zou kunnen volgen.

Vergeet echter niet dat er alleen vertolking is in de plenaire vergadering, in commissie- en fractievergaderingen en in sommige andere vergaderingen. Ook bestaat er sinds enkele jaren de “ad personam” vertolking voor bepaalde parlementsleden die een belangrijke functie vervullen en moeten onderhandelen met vertegenwoordigers van andere instellingen (Raad, Commissie). Maar afgezien daarvan is het duidelijk dat parlements-leden met een grote talenkennis gemakkelijker functioneren dan parlementsleden met minder talenkennis. Zodra hij of zij immers met een collega, met een ambtenaar van het Parlement, met een ambtenaar van de Europese Commissie, met buitenlandse journalisten, etc. in contact komt die zijn taal niet spreekt zal de communicatie moeizaam verlopen en zal vaak van een taal die men beide kent, en vaak is dat het Engels, gebruik moeten maken.

-Het Engels als een lingua franca zou nadelen vormen voor sprekers die het Engels niet als moedertaal hebben. Wat denkt u daarvan? Wegen de nadelen van het Engels als een lingua franca zwaarder door dan de voordelen ervan? Het gebruik van één taal is niet democratisch en daarom voor het Europees Parlement onaanvaardbaar.

-Hebt u het gevoel dat de tolken vrezen voor wat er gebeuren zal als landen blijven lid worden van de EU? Zoals al gezegd, ze vrezen dat niet, maar waar tolken vroeger genoeg hadden aan de kennis van twee talen moeten ze er nu vijf tot in de puntjes beheersen en bijhouden. En dat vraagt veel inspanning. De moeilijkheden liggen veel meer op een ander vlak: in het parlement krijgen leden op bepaalde tijdstippen het recht om één minuut te spreken. In die ene minuut willen ze heel veel zeggen en ze spreken dan heel vlug, zo vlug dat het voor een tolk niet meer is bij te houden. Anderzijds lezen de leden soms hun speech voor. Maar een geschreven tekst is veel compacter dan een gesproken tekst en daarom is het voor een tolk heel moeilijk om een geschreven tekst te vertolken. Verder zijn er sprekers die niet in hun moedertaal spreken, maar Engels. Maar tolken worden opgeleid om het Engels van Engelssprekenden te leren en niet het Engels van non-native speakers. Die gebruiken dan vaak grammaticale regels uit hun moedertaal of uitdrukkingen uit hun moedertaal en dat maakt het vertolken van zulk Engels erg moeilijk. Vergeet niet dat wat een tolk doet geen “vertalen” is. Het kan niets naslaan in een woordenboek. Het is allemaal “real time”. De taak van een tolk is om de

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca boodschap over te brengen en dat hoeft niet in dezelfde bewoordingen in een andere taal te zijn. Een tolk zal vaak samenvatten en overbodige woorden van een betoog achterwege laten.

9.4 Interview with a translator and a former interpreter

Mr. de Corte – 14th of May 2010 -U bent vertaler bij het Europees Parlement? Hoe lang precies al? Ik ben al 22 jaar vertaler bij het Europees Parlement en daarvoor heb ik ook een aantal jaren als conferentietolk gewerkt bij het Europees Parlement. Mijn hoofdtalen zijn Frans, Italiaans, Duits, Portugees en Engels.

-En u doet dat werk graag, neem ik aan? Ja, uiteraard, ik doe het niet tegen mijn zin. Maar om eerlijk te zijn, tolk ik natuurlijk veel liever dan dat ik vertaal, omdat ik qua karakter nu eenmaal meer tolk ben dan vertaler. Dus dat doe ik ook liever.

-En waarom dan juist? Wel, tolken is socialer, spannender, levendiger. Vertalen is eerder in je eigen hokje bezig zijn, maar het voordeel is dan wel weer dat je wat meer tijd hebt om dingen op te zoeken. Het is meer een individuele bezigheid. Niet echt een monnikenbestaan, dat is veel gezegd, maar je bent wel meer afgescheiden van het eigenlijke gebeuren. Je weet bijvoorbeeld wel voor wie je tolkt, maar je weet nooit precies wie je vertalingen gaat lezen. Nu ja, dat kun je wel een klein beetje uitzoeken, maar op voorhand weet je niet voor wie je vertalingen bestemd zijn. Terwijl bij tolken, zit je in het cabinetje, je kijkt naar de zaal en je ziet aan hun mimiek of jouw vertolking goed is overgekomen. En dan kun je eventueel nog eens hervatten. Bijvoorbeeld als je de wenkbrauwen ziet fronsen, besef je dat je je misschien fout hebt uitgedrukt, en dan kan je alsnog je foutje rechtzetten. Dat is bij het vertalen niet het geval. De teksten die ik vandaag vertaalde, daarvan weet ik dat ze bedoeld zijn voor parlementsleden en voor medewerkers en als daar nu één of ander foutje of onnauwkeurigheid inzit, en die mensen zien of weten dat, dan kan ik dat eigenlijk niet meer corrigeren. Ik weet ook niet of de manier waarop ik het vertaald heb, voor hen begrijpelijk is.

-In 2007 is bij die officiële talen, het Bulgaars en het Roemeens bijgekomen, en ook het Iers werd officieel verklaard. 3 jaar eerder waren er ook al eens een tiental talen bijgekomen. Heeft u daar op dat moment zelf iets van gemerkt? Ja, eigenlijk wel. Dat vroeg een aanpassing van de hele administratie. Wij zijn de manier van werken, nog voor die talen erbij kwamen, helemaal beginnen herdenken, omdat we wisten dat het met twaalf talen erbij nu eenmaal niet meer zou lukken. Toen de talen er dan uiteindelijk bijkwamen, heeft dat heel veel veranderingen teweeg gebracht. De grootste veranderingen 85

Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca natuurlijk, in die afdelingen van de talen die erbij zijn gekomen, want de meesten van die vertalers waren vrij jonge collega’s, dus minder ervaren en die moesten heel wat inhalen. Wat voor ons voor de hand lag, was voor hen allemaal nieuw. Dus dat heeft wel veel veranderingen teweeg gebracht en ook vrees dat het niet zou lukken met al die talen, omdat een heleboel talencombinaties niet afgedekt zijn bijvoorbeeld. Vroeger waren bijna alle talencombinaties afgedekt in iedere taalafdeling; nu is het zo dat wij zijn gaan vertalen via relay-talen, via spiltalen, bv. het Engels, Frans, Duits. Dus dat betekent dat, bv een Bulgaarse tekst waar wij op de Nederlandse afdeling geen vertalers voor hebben, eerst naar het Engels vertaald wordt op de Engelse afdeling. Dan krijgen wij, op de Nederlandse afdeling, die Engelse tekst, en op basis daarvan vertalen wij die dan naar het Nederlands.

-Wordt dat systeem nu meer gebruikt dan gewone rechtstreekse vertalingen? Neen, het wordt over het algemeen niet meer gebruikt, maar voor een aantal van die kleinere nieuwe talen, gebruiken we wel het relay-systeem. In elke afdeling zijn er wel een paar uitzonderingen, die wel Roemeens of Slovaakse vertalers hebben, maar in de meeste afdelingen is dat dus niet het geval. Alleen zijn dan in de grotere afdelingen, zoals het Frans, Duits, Engels, die talencombinaties wel afgedekt.

-Heeft u er een idee van hoeveel vertalers of tolken er zo gemiddeld per nieuwe taal bijkomen? Of hangt dat voornamelijk van de taal zelf af? Een precies zicht op die cijfers heb ik niet, maar in het Parlement is het eigenlijk de bedoeling dat iedere afdeling, dus zowel de oude als de nieuwe, zo’n 35-tal vertalers heeft. De nieuwe, kleinere afdelingen werken nu echter maar met zo’n 25-tal vertalers. Maar er worden regelmatig cursussen georganiseerd om nieuwe vertalers aan te trekken.

-En merkt u al eventuele veranderingen naar een toekomstige toetreding toe, op? Wordt er al voorbereidingswerk gedaan voor de komst van bv. Turkije, Kroatië of Macedonië? Ja, vooral voor Kroatië, daarvoor zijn er al vertalers fysiek aanwezig bij ons. En die houden zich vooral bezig met het vertalen van het acquis communautaire, dus de wetgeving. Ik weet niet juist met hoeveel; die zijn een paar maanden geleden aangekomen. Voor Turkije of Macedonië is dat nog niet gebeurd.

-Is er onder vertalers zelf weer diezelfde angst als toen in 2004 of 2007, toen dat grote aantal landen toetrad, of is men er nu zekerder van dat het allemaal wel zal lukken? Nou, neen. Ik geloof dat iedereen nu zowat de indruk heeft dat we nu bijna aan de grenzen zitten, de grenzen van het mogelijke, van de kwaliteitsgarantie. Maar ja, kijk, als er een uitbreiding gebeurt, dan zullen de politici dat niet afhankelijk laten maken van wat de vertalers of tolken zeggen. Die zullen zeggen: “Kijk, Kroatië komt er bij, er komen nog vijf

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca landen bij, nog vijf talen en trek je plan! Zorg er maar voor dat je het organiseert.” Nu, het is niet onmogelijk, maar het wordt wel iedere keer moeilijker.

-De grens is volgens u dus bereikt. En weet u dan wat eventuele oplossingen zouden zijn? Moet er dan worden overgestapt op een grootschaliger gebruik van het relay-vertalen of misschien eerder het gebruik van een lingua franca? Wel ja, kijk, de lingua franca is eigenlijk al het Engels aan het worden. Dat heeft als gevolg dat het Frans, het Duits, het Spaans, het Italiaans … minder vaak gebruikt worden. Wat vroeger de grote talen waren, die worden nu dus gewoon minder gebruikt. Maar het levert natuurlijk een ander enorm probleem op, omdat nu meer en meer Engelse teksten geschreven worden door niet-Engelstaligen. En die teksten zijn daardoor heel vaak in slecht Engels geschreven. Want iedereen kent wel Engels; het World-English, het computer- en internet- Engels, iedereen spreekt Engels, maar de kwaliteit gaat achteruit. En dat wordt een probleem. Daardoor moet een Engelse tekst die naar vertaling wordt gestuurd, nu eerst geëdit worden, dus die moet eerst nagelezen en aangepast worden door een echte native speaker. En dat is zo één van de risico’s van het gebruik van lingua franca. Maar natuurlijk is er ook nog de evolutie van het asymmetrische vertalen, die nu al zo’n vijftien jaar lang aan de hand is. Dat houdt in dat niet alle teksten uit alle talen naar alle talen vertaald worden. Bij het Parlement geldt dat alleen de wetgeving uit alle – in alle talen vertaald wordt. Maar alles wat niet-wetgeving is of niet-wetgeving zou kunnen worden, dat wordt allemaal in 2 à 3, maximum 4 talen vertaald. Zo ook interne documenten bijvoorbeeld, administratieve documenten bestemd voor het personeel, interne documenten tussen de instellingen van de EU, dat wordt niet allemaal meer naar alle talen vertaald. Daardoor vermindert het werk en ook de kans op problemen.

-Moet men dan misschien eerder investeren in mensen die de teksten eerst editen zodat het eigenlijke vertaalproces gemakkelijker kan verlopen? Ja, er is nu bijvoorbeeld al een laag of ‘layer’ toegevoegd tussen de vertaling en de publicatie van de wet en dat zijn de juristen-linguïsten. Zij bekijken de tekst nog eens, vanuit juridisch en taalkundig perspectief, om te verifiëren of alles klopt en of de wetgeving goed vertaald is. Maar volgens mij, zou dat best ook aangevuld worden met een laag van ‘pre-editing’, waarbij de tekst gecontroleerd wordt nog vóór hij vertaald wordt.

-Beschouwt u het als een verlies dat men meer en meer overstapt op een lingua franca en dus zo eigenlijk minder aandacht besteed aan andere en soms kleinere talen? Ja, dat is heel jammer. Vaak gebeurt dat ook in het geniep, ook bijvoorbeeld bij de tolken. Die gaan dan naar Vlaamse of Nederlandse afgevaardigden en vragen hen of ze echt vertolking naar het Nederlands nodig hebben, en of ze misschien niet gewoon kunnen meeluisteren met de Engelse of Franse vertolking. Vaak reageert de betrokkene dan bijvoorbeeld met: “Ja, als we daardoor kunnen besparen, doe dan maar zonder Nederlandse vertolking.” En dan moeten 87

Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca er ineens twee of drie tolken minder meereizen. En daar bespaar je dan wel op, alleen verliezen de betrokkenen of de politici zelf soms eens uit het oog dat als ze gaan onderhandelen in een vreemde taal, niet in hun eigen moedertaal, dat ze dan vertrekken vanuit een minderwaardigheidpositie bij die onderhandelingen. Je kan immers nooit zo goed onderhandelen in het Frans als een Fransman. Dat is ook waar onze Vlaamse politici in België zich zo vaak aan schuldig maken. Ze willen absoluut in het Frans spreken of reageren op vragen van journalisten in het Frans, maar hun Frans is nooit zo goed en kan nooit zo goed zijn als dat van de Franse journalist of als dat van de Franstalige politicus. Ze zouden gewoon beter hun eigen moedertaal spreken en dat laten vertolken dan dat ze schabouwelijk Engels of Duits of Franse proberen te spreken.

-Waarschijnlijk laat men ook daarom tolken of vertalers altijd naar hun eigen moedertaal tolken of vertalen? Ja, inderdaad, vertalers en tolken vertalen altijd naar hun moedertaal. Sommigen hebben twee moedertalen, de uitzonderingsgevallen. Maar men zal wel stilaan meer en meer op het Engels overschakelen, ja, voor administratieve zaken dan toch. Maar één ding is zeker: er zal nooits een lingua franca of één enkele taal komen voor de wetgeving omdat dat indruist tegen het principe van algemene toegang tot het recht. Iedere burger moet zijn rechten kunnen uitvoeren, moet de wetgeving kunnen lezen eigenlijk, in zijn eigen taal. Dat is een basisrecht en daar kan je niet van afstappen. Als je plotseling zou beslissen de wetten enkel nog in het Engels te publiceren, dan loop je een gevaar omdat dan de bakker of de slager van om de hoek, in de Kerkstraat in Erps-Kwerps die wetteksten niet kan snappen. En dan kan hij ook zijn rechten niet toepassen. Vandaar dus dat alle wetteksten altijd in alle talen zullen geschreven worden. Een tweede belangrijk principe binnen het Europees Parlement, is dat van de verkiesbaarheid. Je kan aan een kandidaat-parlementslid wel aanbevelen dat hij best nog een andere taal spreekt, maar je kan niet van hem verwachten dat hij alleen verkiesbaar zou zijn als hij Engels spreekt. Of je kan bijvoorbeeld ook niet eisen dat hij drie talen moet kennen. Omdat je dan de democratische verkiesbaarheid van de volksvertegenwoordiging in het gedrang brengt. En dus moet ieder lid dat verkozen wordt in Europa het recht hebben, om zijn eigen taal te spreken en te schrijven. Dus als hij wetteksten of amendementen opstelt, dan moet hij dat kunnen doen in zijn eigen taal. Dat zijn twee heel belangrijke principes die de democratie inhouden. Bij de Europese Commissie ligt dat bijvoorbeeld anders; daar kan je wel bijvoorbeeld enkel Europese commissarissen aanstellen die minstens ook Engels spreken. Dat kan je eisen, omdat die niet verkozen worden door het volk. Het Europees Parlement is daarin helemaal anders, daar heb je die twee principes die gelden. Dus enerzijds, het recht van de burger om de wet te kunnen begrijpen en toepassen in zijn eigen taal en anderzijds, het recht van iedere burger om verkozen te kunnen worden, niet op basis van zijn talenkennis, maar op basis van zijn ideeën en zijn kwaliteiten.

88

Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca -Verschillende getuigenissen van tolken en vertalers hebben het ook vaak over het feit dat zij nog elke dag bijleren. Niet alleen op het vlak van hun talenkennis, maar ook over de instelling waarvoor ze werken. Geldt dat voor u ook? Ja, dat klopt zeker. Iedere tekst die je vertaalt, daar steek je altijd wat van op. Soms niet veel, maar er is altijd wel iets bij dat je voorheen nog niet wist.

-Denkt u er soms aan nog een volledige nieuwe taal bij te leren? Neen, dat niet. Of tenminste toch niet meer voor het werk. Ik zou het nog wel als hobby overwegen, maar niet meer voor het werk. Dat laat ik aan die jongeren over.

9.5 Interview with a scholar who specialises in these matters

Ms. Mamadouh – 23th of March 2011 -Kunt u wat algemene achtergrondinformatie geven over uw job? Ik ben politiek en cultureel geograaf, dus geen taalkundige, met andere woorden, geen deskundige, geen sociolinguïst. Ik ben me eigenlijk meer met de talen gaan bezig houden omdat ik bezig was met Europese politiek, dus meer omdat je daar dan tegen aanloopt. En ik heb er sindsdien dus heel veel over gelezen. Ik vind het buitengewoon boeiend om te kijken naar hoe dat loopt, maar ik ben niet alleen geïnteresseerd in hoe het gaat in de instellingen, want volgens mij, is het grote probleem natuurlijk dat men dat snel als één ding benoemt, maar er zijn zoveel verschillende communicatieproblemen. Dus als je praat over interne communicatie, of externe met de burgers, met overheden, met belangengroepen, dat is heel wat anders dan wat er binnen zo’n instelling gebeurt. Als je praat over vertalen en de mondelinge communicatie, dat is ook helemaal iets anders. Dus dat vind ik wel interessant. Een andere reden waarom het mij zo boeit, is omdat ik zelf een Franse achtergrond heb en dan zie je eigenlijk de vergelijking tussen hoe Nederlanders ermee omgaan en hoe Fransen met talen omgaan en dan natuurlijk België daar middenin, dat is heel indrukwekkend. Nederlanders, die denken dat ze heel goed Engels spreken en die switchen heel makkelijk en dat zullen Vlamingen niet zo snel doen omdat zij denken “Het Nederlands moet gewoon een plek hebben.” En Fransen zullen dat ook niet zo snel doen, deels omdat ze slechter Engels kunnen, maar zelfs als ze goed Engels kunnen, zullen ze dat niet snel doen. Bijvoorbeeld president Chirac, die sprak heel erg goed Engels, die had in Amerika gestudeerd, maar die zou nooit Engels spreken bij een officiële gelegenheid. Voor hem was het wel echt belangrijk om het Frans te representeren en aanwezig te laten zijn. Dus die verschillen in de manier van kijken, dat heb ik wel echt altijd boeiend gevonden. En dan heb ik vooral gekeken naar het Parlement, maar wat ik nu ook veel doe, is het gebruik van nieuwe media door de instellingen bestuderen, dus ook de Commissie (websites, youtube, al dat soort dingen). Want die nieuwe media, die bieden heel veel leuke technieken om toch meertaligheid tot uitdrukking te brengen (of in ieder geval, proberen tot uitdrukking te brengen), vergeleken met de oude media. Dus dat ligt ook binnen mijn interesse. En aan de andere kant, is er dat Parlement, omdat het Parlement heel anders is dan de andere instellingen omdat dat gekozen mensen zijn. En dat betekent dat het niet op dezelfde manier geregeld kan worden als bij de Commissie, of bij het Hof van Justitie, waar men professionele mensen rekruteert, en je dus ook kan eisen 89

Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca dat ze 2 talen moeten kennen, of 3 of 4. En verder, ik ben een geograaf en die kijken naar talen vanuit die ruimtelijke kant. Je kan wel leuke principes bedenken, over meertaligheid, maar het drukt zich uit, het gebeurt in een bepaalde ruimte, en dat betekent dat soms principiële dingen niet gerealiseerd kunnen worden. Zo zijn er bijvoorbeeld landen die bedacht hebben dat kinderen op school in hun moedertaal moeten geholpen worden, als een soort onderwijsmiddel, vooraleer ze de taal van de staat leren, een prachtig idee, maar in de praktijk kan je natuurlijk niet een docent zetten bij elk kind. Dan moet je bijvoorbeeld al regelingen treffen waarbij er minstens 10 kinderen per bepaalde taal aanwezig zijn in de school, ofzo. En zo zie je dat de geografie van verspreiding van talen en taalgroepen en de interactie tussen talen heel belangrijk is. Veel dingen zijn natuurlijk vanzelfsprekend voor mensen die in België wonen, want daar is dat de dagelijkse praktijk. Maar in Nederland denken ze er op die manier niet over.

-Klopt het als ik zeg dat het huidige taalbeleid van het Europees Parlement er in theorie één is van volledige meertaligheid, maar dat dit zich in de praktijk vertaalt naar een officieuze lingua franca, het Engels, waardoor kleinere talen steeds minder aan bod komen? Ja, het is een lastige kwestie. Ik denk wel dat het Engels veel meer gebruikt wordt dan pakweg 2 of 3 jaar geleden. En dat komt deels door het aantal talen. Abram de Swaan, een Nederlands socioloog, die roept altijd “Hoe meer talen, hoe meer Engels!”. En dat is inderdaad wat telkens opvalt. Dat is overigens niet specifiek voor de EU, dat zag je in India gebeuren en dat was ook het geval in Zuid-Afrika na de nieuwe grondwet. Daar zijn 11 officiële talen en dat betekent dat sindsdien het Afrikaans als tweede taal geminderd is en de andere Afrikaanse talen die erkend zijn als officiële talen, maar veel minder gestandaardiseerd zijn, ook minder gebruikt worden, dus uiteindelijk wordt daar ook meer Engels gesproken. En dat proces zie je in het Parlement ook. Maar het heeft ook andere oorzaken. Het heeft ook te maken met de verandering in de samenstelling van het Parlement en ook met verjonging. In landen als Spanje, Italië, Frankrijk, kunnen de jonge generaties veel beter Engels dan vroeger. Ouder Italianen of Grieken of Spanjaarden die een buitenlandse taal konden – en dat was echt lang niet alle Europarlementariërs – maar degene die wel een buitenlandse taal konden, die konden het vaakst Frans. Jongere mensen spreken meestal Engels. Een tweede reden is de uitbreiding, en dan vooral de uitbreiding van 1995 met Zweden en Finland en Oostenrijk, en dan die uitbreiding uit het Oosten. Dat waren vooral mensen die het Engels als vreemde taal hadden. En bij de uitbreiding is ook iets geks gebeurt, dat de Fransen hebben laten liggen: namelijk dat het hele proces van onderhandelingen in het Engels is gegaan. Dat had op zich niet gehoeven. Ik weet niet goed hoe dat gekomen is, de Commissie stuurde stukken in het Engels ofzo, maar dus dat proces verliep in het Engels. En dat betekent ook dat de ambtenaren die gewend raakten aan Brussel dat vooral in het Engels deden. Voor sommige landen was dat wel een probleem, in Roemenië, bijvoorbeeld, vond je natuurlijk veel makkelijker hoogopgeleide mensen die het Frans beheersten, dan mensen die het Engels beheersten, maar ja, zo is het nu eenmaal gelopen. Dus ja, op papier is het volledige meertaligheid, maar je zou beter ‘gelijkwaardigheid tussen talen’ zeggen, op papier. Er is niet één meer dan de andere, wat natuurlijk een gevolg is van 90

Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca dat ene vage reglement uit 1958, dat zegt dat alle talen officiële talen zijn en werktalen, maar wat dat precies betekent, weet niemand. Als je het letterlijk neemt, kan het ook betekenen dat de werktaal één van deze talen moet zijn, maar niet noodzakelijk alle 23 talen tegelijk. Dus daar zie je al die marge, maar andere kant is het wel zo dat in de praktijk sommige talen meer gebruikt worden dan andere. En dat uit zich vooral in het gebruik in informele sfeer, in het besluitvormingsproces niet echt. Maar uiteindelijk, het eindproduct en de verslagen en dergelijke, die worden wel in al die talen vertaald. Maar het is op de weg daar naartoe, de onderhandelingen en de gesprekken, daar gaat het anders. Omdat ja, je moet natuurlijk een beetje pragmatisch en praktisch blijven, want het is gewoon allemaal niet meer te regelen. Zelfs als je achter elke parlementariër een tolk zou zetten, dan zou dat niet genoeg zijn, want je kan niet van die tolk verwachten dat die alle talen kent. Wat je wel nog zou kunnen doen, is per parlementariër een tolk hebben en dan zorgen dat al die tolken één gemeenschappelijke taal spreken, maar daar kleven ook wel bezwaren aan. Want natuurlijk is na verloop van tijd, die ene taal de taal die iedereen gaat spreken. Nu ja, om te zeggen dat het heel erg scheef loopt, dat is misschien wat overdreven, maar het feit dat men weet dat het uiteindelijk ook in alle talen vertaald gaat worden, maakt toch dat de mensen erover gaan nadenken, als dat niet meer zou gebeuren. En aan het eind, zou enkel de vervreemding groter worden. Wat heel klassiek is, bijvoorbeeld, is dat mensen in het Engels over iets onderhandelen en tot een besluit komen dat ze heel redelijk vinden, maar dan wordt dat bijvoorbeeld vertaald in het Nederlands en dan denken ze: “hmm, is toch niet helemaal hoe ik het wilde.” Dan klinkt het erger, dan hoe ze het bedoeld hadden, of klinkt het alsof ze meer hebben weggegeven dan ze oorspronkelijk wilden. Er zijn eigenlijk verschillende politieke gevoeligheden, en wat betreft die kleine talen, zijn het, volgens mij, eigenlijk niet de sprekers van de kleine talen zijn, die zich het drukst maken, maar net de sprekers van de andere grote talen. Dus de Duitstaligen en de Franstaligen zijn diegenen die roepen van “het Engels is te belangrijk”. Mensen uit Finland, of uit Estland, of zelfs uit Nederland, die verwachten eigenlijk niet dat zij met hun taal altijd overal terecht kunnen. Vlaanderen is anders, omdat het zich ook in Brussel afspeelt en omdat men er natuurlijk heel gevoelig voor is, omdat men die geschiedenis kent van wat het betekent als een taal gemarginaliseerd wordt. En dat idee hebben Nederlanders niet. Dat idee van “als we niet opletten, wordt het een keukentaal, want je gebruikt het niet meer op de universiteit, je gebruikt het niet meer in de politiek, je gebruikt het niet meer op tv, … Wat blijft er dan nog over?” Daar zijn Nederlanders niet zo gevoelig voor, terwijl men in Vlaanderen net denkt dat ze dat niet opnieuw willen hebben. Maar op zich, mensen die een taal spreken die weinig onderwezen wordt buiten de grens, die verwachten niet dat ze daarmee weg kunnen. Dus het is dan ook gebruikelijk in kleinere landen, zoals Zweden of Finland, dat kandidaten bij het Europees Parlement die geen Engels spreken, een beetje belachelijk gemaakt worden. “Wat denk je daar te kunnen doen, als je geen buitenlandse talen kent?” Terwijl men in een land als Italië of Frankrijk dat volstrekt normaal vindt.

-In uw boek ‘De talen in het EP’ uit 1995 beschrijft u inderdaad hoe men bij een eventuele overgang naar het Frans en Engels als werktalen, op tegenkanting van de Duitsers zal stuiten 91

Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca en als men het Duits dan ook als werktaal zou gebruiken, de Spanjaarden en Italianen niet akkoord zouden gaan. Gebruikt men dan, om die laatsten tevreden te stellen, 5 werktalen (Engels, Frans, Duits, Spaans, Italiaans) dan komt er waarschijnlijk verzet van de kleinere talen, zoals bv het Nederlands. Dat is nu dus nog steeds min of meer het geval. Maar ik zou net verwachten dat nu, door al die nieuwe talen en landen die erbij zijn gekomen, de Fransen ondertussen wel al zouden moeten begrepen hebben dat het Engels het pleit heeft gewonnen. Ja, het is wel veranderd sinds de jaren negentig. Ten eerste is het verschil tussen het Engels en het Frans veel groter geworden. Als je bijvoorbeeld naar de cijfers kijkt, bijvoorbeeld bij de Commissie. Daar heb je 3 werktalen (officieus, maar iedereen heeft er zich bij neergelegd), het Engels, het Frans en het Duits, en dat betekent dus dat veel documenten in één van die 3 talen worden gereduceerd en dan vertaald. Maar het aandeel van het Engels groeit alleen maar. Het Duits stelt niks voor. Maar het Frans is echt ingeslommeld, tegenover begin jaren ’90. Toen gebeurden de zaken meer in het Frans dan in het Engels. Dus dat is echt veranderd. Of bijvoorbeeld, persconferenties van de Commissie, die waren tot en met Delhors, volgens mij, alleen maar in het Frans. En toen heeft Santer verklaard dat men ook in het Engels mocht vragen stellen. Waarop de Fransen natuurlijk heel verontwaardigd riepen dat het een schande was, terwijl men voordien natuurlijk 30 jaar lang alleen maar vragen kon stellen in het Frans. Maar ja, men was gewend aan dat idee. En nu is het Franse onderwijs ook al veel beter, er zijn veel Fransen die goed Engels spreken, of in ieder geval genoeg om zich te kunnen redden, dus dat is niet zo’n praktisch probleem. Wat wel blijft, is de zorg over wat het betekent als je alles in het Engels gaat doen. En dat is echt een kwestie van de inhoud van een taal. Denk maar aan Sapir, de taalkundige. Maar men vreest dus dat als men één werktaal zou nemen, dat dat op de inhoud effect zou hebben. En het ironische is natuurlijk, dat het Engels de taal is van de Common Law, terwijl het rechtssysteem van de EU veel meer continentaal gericht is, veel meer gebaseerd op het Franse recht en het Romeins recht. Men heeft schrik dat als men de dingen meer zou voorbereiden in het Engels, dat dan het Engelse en zelfs Amerikaanse gedachtegoed z’n stempel zou drukken. Terwijl als men steeds gedwongen wordt om toch te vertalen en toch heen en weer te gaan tussen verschillende culturele bagage, dan men zich dan ook veel meer bewust is, van die verschillende betekenissen van die 27 verschillende landen. En het idee van de Fransen en Duitsers, is meestal dat als men toch enkel het Engels, Frans en Duits zou gebruiken, dat er dan al genoeg diversiteit is. Terwijl sprekers van kleinere talen meestal liever hebben dat toch alles in het Engels gebeurt, omdat ze dan goed Engels leren. Liever dat dan dat ze Engels, Duits en Frans moeten spreken, op een behoorlijk niveau en dan telkens moeten schakelen. Maar eigenlijk zit er natuurlijk wel wat in, in dat verhaal over die diversiteit. Dus dat maakt het zo ingewikkeld. Wat betreft de link met inhoudelijke connotaties, geldt dat zelfs al voor hele simpele woorden. En ook achter het hele wetgevingsproces, ook al is het Parlement daar niet altijd mee bezig, daar schuilt een hele industrie achter, achter dat ‘wet geven’, van mensen, juridische vertalers en dergelijke die daar dag in dag uit mee bezig zijn. Bijvoorbeeld, woorden als ‘contract’ of ‘contractbreuk’, van die kleine simpele woordjes, zelfs dat is in al die talen net iets anders dan in het Engels en heeft andere connotaties. Zelfs tussen het Amerikaans en het Engels heb je grote verschillen, en dan is er ook nog het Schots recht en het Iers recht. Dus alleen al binnen 92

Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca de EU, zijn er al die verschillen. Dus op zich, zou je kunnen zeggen, dat die meertaligheid eigenlijk een soort van uitdrukking is van die diversiteit, die het heel zichtbaar maakt. En dat is op zich wel goed, want anders zouden ze misschien helemaal losgezongen raken van de werkelijkheid waarmee ze te maken hebben.

-Een voorbeeld van hoe de inhoud van een taal vast hangt aan de taal zelf, is misschien ook hoe men in de Nederlandstalige media lang moeite had met hoe men Herman Van Rompuy moest noemen: voorzitter of president? Professor Vos van de universiteit Gent vertelde dat men daar zelfs intern lang over beraad heeft. Ja, dat is inderdaad duidelijk een voorbeeld. Hij wordt nu president genoemd, en in de Nederlandse media wordt hij vaak ook president van de EU genoemd, niet van de Raad. Nu, in de Germaanse talen heb je dus 2 woorden en ‘voorzitter’ is natuurlijk iets anders. Terwijl in het Frans, heb je daar maar één woord voor. En vermoedelijk is er daarom niet zo over nagedacht en dat komt best vaker voor, dat dingen vreemd vertaald worden één keer, en dan blijft dat zo hangen. Want het moet consequent zijn, en dat is natuurlijk ook nog een probleem. Eenmaal het verkeerd in een richtlijn staat, moet men dat zo houden de volgende keren, omwille van die consequentie. Maar dus, dat soort dingen gebeuren wel vaker.

In 2007, werden 2 nieuwe talen toegevoegd aan de lijst, en 3 jaar eerder, in 2004, kwam er ook al een 10-tal talen bij. Men heeft die grote toevoer aan talen toen voornamelijk opgelost door een grootschaliger gebruik van het vertalen en vertolken via relay-talen en door het asymmetrische vertalen. Denkt u dat deze oplossingen ook eventuele problemen in de toekomst kunnen wegwerken of moeten er radicalere oplossingen bedacht worden? Ja, nu ik volg het natuurlijk wel al wat langer, en elke keer, echt waar, bij elke uitbreiding denkt men dat het deze keer niet zal lukken. En eenmaal het gebeurd is, dan klinkt het van “Nu zijn de limieten echt bereikt. We kunnen niet meer aan.” En dan vinden ze toch nieuwe middelen om daarmee om te gaan. Die relais-talen is natuurlijk een heel belangrijke oplossing geweest. En wat men nu ook doet, en vroeger niet, is het vertalen naar een andere taal. Dat was vroeger een soort anathema, je moest absoluut vertalen naar je eigen taal. En daar houdt men zich nu minder aan, tenminste bij de tolken, omdat het op een bepaald moment gewoon niet meer lukte, met die nieuwe lidstaten. Het probleem bij de Commissie zijn de Engelstalige tolken, die zijn het moeilijkst om te vinden. Omdat er heel weinig Engelstaligen zijn, die veel talen kunnen. Maar nu dat ze dat idee hebben losgelaten, merken ze dat het eigenlijk hartstikke goed werkt. Omdat men merkte dat bijvoorbeeld een Tsjech die naar het Engels moest vertalen, vaak veel beter de context van wat die Tsjechische minister aan het vertellen was, kon interpreteren. Terwijl de Engelse tolk die het naar het Engels vertaalde, soms niet wist wat er speelde. Want veel mensen, vooral politici in de Raad en in het Europees Parlement, die denken er niet over na dat ze praten voor zo’n grote groep. Die hebben de neiging om allerlei referenties te gebruiken, niet alleen uitdrukkingen die moeilijk te vertalen zijn, maar ook bijvoorbeeld zaken die in de landelijke kranten verschenen was, de dag voordien. Terwijl de andere mensen natuurlijk niet de hoofdkrant van Tsjechië hebben gelezen. 93

Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca Dus dat idee van naar je eigen moedertaal te vertolken, heeft men losgelaten en dan zijn er natuurlijk ook nog die relaistalen. Dat biedt heel veel perspectief. Want daardoor wordt het Engels en het Frans veel meer gebruikt als relaistaal, en misschien Duits, maar dat is het dan. En dat maakt het leven voor tolken natuurlijk veel gemakkelijker. En op die manier, kan je veel meer behelpen. Maar natuurlijk blijft de vraag, hoe duur het allemaal wordt. Maar ik heb het altijd gek gevonden dat mensen denken dat als politici in het Engels zouden praten, dat dan die problemen van kwaliteit en kosten er dan niet zouden zijn. Terwijl die tolken deskundigen zijn, die hebben ervoor gestudeerd, die hebben expertise op dat niveau. Dus dat begrijp ik niet, dat je dan zou denken dat mensen die amateur zijn op gebied van taal, dat even goed zouden kunnen. Dat geloof ik niet. Dus ofwel, worden de mensen die niet zo goed Engels of Frans of Duits spreken, helemaal gemarginaliseerd, ofwel zijn zij zodanig gesocialiseerd in die talen, dat ze los komen van hun eigen achterban. En dat wil je eigenlijk ook niet. Maar ja, de grens bereikt… Het is inderdaad heel indrukwekkend: je hebt nu meer alfabetten, de structuur van de talen is zo verschillend, dat het echt heel moeilijk wordt. Dat laatste geldt vooral voor wetgeving, niet voor het vertolken van wat mensen zeggen. Omdat de wetgeving in de verschillende talen echt precies hetzelfde moet zijn, en dat is wel ingewikkeld, voor bv talen als het Fins en het Ests. Maar het is wel indrukwekkend wat ze bereiken.

-Ongeveer een maand geleden woonde ik een lezing bij van professor David Crystal over de verschillende ‘world-Englishes’. De algemene teneur van zijn lezing was dat we ons eigenlijk niet teveel zorgen moeten maken over het dominante karakter van het Engels en over de opmars van het Engels als wereldtaal. Volgens hem, is het belangrijkste dat we elkaars boodschappen en ideeën verstaan. Is dat een stelling waar het Europees Parlement ook boodschap aan zou hebben, of hebben we hier toch te maken met zaken die te delicaat zijn om door dergelijk idee opgelost te worden? Ja, het hangt er natuurlijk van af hoe precies de dingen moeten zijn. Als het gaat over vakantiegesprekken, ja, dan gaat het altijd wel goed. Maar wat men daar bij die instellingen doet, dat zijn natuurlijk politiek gevoelige dingen. En die moeten op een bepaalde manier verteld worden, zodat ze acceptabel zijn voor veel mensen. Of het gaat om de wetgeving, en dat moet gewoon heel erg precies zijn. En het is nu eenmaal zo afgesproken dat al die varianten gelijkwaardig zijn, dus dat moet nu eenmaal allemaal hetzelfde betekenen. Maar dat het Engels oprukt als lingua franca – en dan is het natuurlijk de vraag wat een lingua franca precies is – dat zal zo blijven. Zeker in alles wat de civil society is. De universiteit is daar een goed voorbeeld van. Namelijk dat men wegens die erasmus-programma’s begonnen is aan Engelstalige cursussen, want je kan moeilijk aan bijvoorbeeld een student politicologie vragen om Nederlands te leren om eventjes 6 maanden in Gent of Amsterdam te komen studeren. Dus de verengelsing van de Nederlandse universiteit – en die is echt vergevorderd in de masterfase – dat heeft daar allemaal mee te maken. Dat geldt ook voor allerlei uitwisselingen waar je de middelen niet hebt om 20 tolken in te huren. En net bij die kerninstellingen, ja, daar zal het ook niet snel verdwijnen, denk ik. De grote discussie zou eerder moeten zijn, wat voor Engels we willen. Willen we een soort Europees Engels? En de 94

Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca Britten zijn eigenlijk degenen die zich zorgen zouden moeten maken, want zij zijn degenen die dat Europese Engels vaak niet helemaal goed begrijpen of waarschijnlijk het heel raar vinden klinken en denken: “Wat is dat voor iets?” Dus die zullen zich misschien drukker maken over dat Engels dan wij. En of het dan op termijn de andere talen wegdrukt, dat is toch niet ondenkbaar, denk ik. En daar moet je wel voor oppassen. Zeker op de universiteit, of toch in ieder geval, wat betreft de sociale wetenschappen. Hier op de universiteit van Amsterdam, is de master geografie eigenlijk Engelstalig, tenminste op papier is het Nederlandstalig, maar in realiteit zijn bijna alle colleges in het Engels. Maar dat komt ook omdat we met zo weinig zijn. In de politicologie, waar ze veel meer studenten hebben, is er meestal een groepje in het Engels en een groepje in het Nederlands. Maar wij zijn met te weinig om in de master parallelle groepen te hebben, dus dan moet je kiezen. Ofwel aanvaard je geen uitwisselingsstudenten, wat natuurlijk ook wel vervelend is, ofwel laat je iedereen in het Engels praten. Met alle gevolgen van dien, natuurlijk. Maar het is natuurlijk niet erg dat je Engels spreekt, alleen oefen je zo je Nederlands dan niet. En het is niet zo dat mensen op hun 18 jaar klaar zijn met hun Nederlands, die moeten ook nog leren presenteren en schrijven enzovoort. Dus het is in ieder geval belangrijk dat dat ook nog gebeurt. Ik ben niet tegen het Engels, maar het moet niet alleen maar Engels zijn.

-Het Parlement zal waarschijnlijk nooit enkel het Engels als officiële taal gebruiken? Nee, inderdaad, dat kan ik me niet voorstellen. Toch niet binnen 10 of 20 jaar. Dat lijkt me uitgesloten.

-Vorig jaar nam ik een interview af van een tolk en die liet me verstaan dat het Europees Parlement zich eigenlijk maar weinig aantrekt van hoe haalbaar het nog allemaal is voor de tolken en vertalers. Hij zei dat men eerder vindt dat de tolken en vertalers hun plan maar moeten trekken en maar moeten zorgen dat het werkt. Ja, dat verhaaltje heb ik eerder ook al gehoord. “Zo, jullie moeten het doen met zoveel geld, en zoek maar uit hoe je het doet.” Maar aan de andere kant, denk ik dat politici en inhoudelijke ambtenaren het vaak anders beleven, omdat bijvoorbeeld de werktijden van de tolken erg bepalend zijn voor hoe hun vergaderingen lopen. En ja, dat is het clichéverhaal, maar het klopt wel, dat dan op een bepaald moment de tolken de kamer moeten verlaten wanneer er dingen besloten moeten worden. Maar het is wel zo, dat men de middelen niet echt vergroot heeft. En dat zal ook niet snel gebeuren. Daarom moet je inderdaad kijken naar andere oplossingen, zoals bv de zaken anders gaan organiseren. Nu het is wel zo, dat de lidstaten unaniem beslissingen moeten nemen. En bij elke uitbreiding, brengt elke nieuwe lidstaat meestal zijn eigen taal mee. Maar het is dus aan de lidstaat zelf om dat te beslissen. En die regeling heeft natuurlijk ook wel al voor wat problemen gezorgd. Toen lid werd, wilden zij het Maltees uiteraard als één van de officiële talen van de EU zien. Terwijl bijna iedereen in Malta Engels kan. Nu, daarop besloot Ierland dat zij uiteindelijk toch wilden dat ook het Iers officiële status kreeg. Voordien was het immers gewoon een ‘Treaty Language’, wat betekent dat de Treaty wel in het Iers vertaald werd, maar dat het niet als werktaal 95

Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca gebruikt werd in de EU. Met andere woorden, als Spanje een aanvraag indient om het Catalaans te aanvaarden als officiële taal van de EU, of het Baskisch, dan zal dat waarschijnlijk ook ingewilligd worden. En dan weet je natuurlijk niet meer waar het stopt. Dus de schuld ligt niet bij het Parlement, maar eerder bij de lidstaten die telkens hun taal willen meebrengen. Of bij de beslissing die het Parlement ooit nam, die zei dat elke lidstaat zijn taal mag meebrengen. Nu, men tracht wel op te letten, hoor. Zo wil men vooral oplossingen vinden voor bijvoorbeeld Europarlementariërs die op het einde toch niet komen opdagen, terwijl er wel tolken voorzien waren. Of men voorziet bijvoorbeeld geen tolken voor mensen waarvan men weet dat ze Engels kunnen. Maar natuurlijk kan dat niet voor plenaire sessies. Zo tracht men dus de kosten te drukken. Nu is het wel zo dat de Parlementariërs daar soms misbruik van maken. Als er bijvoorbeeld (per ongeluk) geen tolken voor een bepaalde taal zijn, of de papieren die voordien worden uitgedeeld ontbreken voor een bepaalde taal, dan vraagt men al eens om uitstel omdat men zogezegd geen beslissing kan nemen als die bepaalde papieren ontbreken. Maar het is wel jammer natuurlijk en heel frustrerend voor de tolken dat zij vaak de zwartepiet krijgen toegespeeld, terwijl ze net willen helpen. Maar dan krijgen ze gewoon te horen dat ze fouten maken. Maar het is gewoon niet altijd even gemakkelijk voor de tolken. Ze moeten vaak verschillende soorten Engels kunnen, want vele Europarlementariërs denken dat ze Engels kunnen, maar kunnen het niet. Dan spreken ze het met een zwaar accent, en moeten de tolken het maar zien te verstaan. Ook bij vertalers heb je een dergelijk probleem. Daarom laat men teksten die niet geschreven zijn door native speakers eerst controleren, en men past ze zelfs aan om ze kort en bondig te maken. Kijk, men heeft ooit berekend dat tolken en vertalers per inwoner 3 euro kosten. Da’s natuurlijk veel, maar ja, in de plaats levert het wel heel veel op. Het is nu eenmaal nodig. Je kan niet zonder. Bovendien vergeet men vaak hoeveel ze gedaan hebben voor de ICT. Het automatisch vertalen, qua terminologie. Dat zijn allemaal zeer nuttige zaken, waarvoor het vertaalsysteem grotendeels gezorgd heeft. Als men nu met 23 talen, over dezelfde middelen zou beschikken als tijdens de jaren ’70 met slechts 4 talen, dan zou het nooit lukken. Maar het lukt wel, dankzij de ICT middelen. Nu, er komt vaak veel gezeur, maar dat is overal zo. En dat zal wel altijd zo zijn.

-Janet Pitt, hoofd van het DG Vertalen, vertelde me dat men op het vlak van IT en computertechnische hulpmiddelen wel veilig zit, maar dat financieel en infrastructurele problemen op een politiek niveau moeten worden opgelost, een niveau dat de tolken en vertalers zelf overstijgt. Denkt u dat de vertalers en tolken daadwerkelijk zo weinig inbreng hebben, of probeert men eerder de schuld naar de andere door te schuiven? De EU is een te gepolitiseerd bureaucratisch systeem, wordt vaak gezegd, waarbij alles via omwegen en regeltjes gebeuren moet. Is dat ook hier van toepassing? Ja, het is wel waar dat het een zeer bureaucratisch systeem is. Dat is wel zo. Zeker sinds het Verdrag van Maastricht, het Verdrag van Amsterdam en dan nu het Verdrag van Lissabon, heeft het Europees Parlement meer macht gekregen en is het dus ook meer bureaucratisch geworden. Dat maakt het allemaal zeer ingewikkeld. Dus ik denk dat de reikwijdte van de 96

Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca macht van het Europees Parlement een grotere en zwaardere uitdaging is dan een groter aantal talen voor de tolken. De diversiteit in mogelijke onderwerpen neemt ook enorm toe.

-Heeft men al inspanningen gedaan om tot een oplossing te komen, naar uw weten? Of is men er nog steeds van overtuigd dat de vertalers en tolken het wel allemaal zullen kunnen bolwerken? Leden van het Europees Parlement stellen wel af en toe een resolutie op, maar dat gaat dan eerder om principiële kwesties, zoals een voorstel om het Catalaans toe te voegen, of gewoon in het algemeen, meer talen. Op een ander niveau, komen er af en toe wel eens voorstellen over de kosten of de organisatie, maar dat komt minder voor. Nu, ik geloof wel dat er een soort Bureau is, dat misschien de reglementering kan veranderen. Dat taalbeleid van het Parlement, mocht dat veranderen, is niet iets dat in de verdragen moet komen te staan. Dat wordt per instelling geregeld. Maar het is natuurlijk zo dat de leden van het EP dat niet snel willen veranderen. Toch niet officieel, omdat het nu eenmaal een ontzettend groot voordeel voor hen betekent, het feit dat ze gewoon in hun eigen taal kunnen discussiëren en onderhandelen. En het is bovendien intrinsiek eigen aan de EU en aan het Parlement. Als men iets zou willen veranderen, om bijvoorbeeld de kosten te drukken, dan zou het eerder zijn dat men het maandelijks ‘bezoek’ aan Strasbourg zou willen afschaffen. Maar officieus gezien, vindt men meer Engels al lang niet erg meer; het is nu eenmaal gemakkelijker. En ja, men doet het heus niet speciaal omwille van het Engels als taal, maar het heeft nu eenmaal ook te maken met factoren als de VS en de mondialisering. Maar het Engels is natuurlijk geen neutrale taal. Zoals ik al zei, het heeft die connotaties en bepaalde sociolinguïstische kenmerken die non-native speakers niet echt kunnen vatten. Misschien moet men wel eerder kijken naar een soort van eigen ‘Europese’ taal, speciaal voor de EU.

-In 1998 schrijft Robert Phillipson dat het Esperanto nooit serieus overwogen werd als oplossing voor de meertaligheidproblematiek. Wat vindt u van die artificiële talen? Wel, men heeft rond ’92-’94 een test gedaan met het Esperanto. Men heeft het een tijdje gebruikt als relay-taal. En dat lukte wonderwel, onder andere omdat het een neutrale taal is, waarmee geen enkel land meer affiniteit mee heeft dan de andere landen. Maar het grote probleem met het Esperanto is natuurlijk het imago. Het blijft gewoon onverkoopbaar. Nu, ik ontken niet dat het nuttig is. Men heeft onderzoek gedaan en ontdekt dat kinderen die eerst het Esperanto geleerd hebben, nadien veel beter vreemde talen kunnen aanleren. Dus het is wel nuttig als pedagogisch middel, maar ja, men leert niet snel een taal, speciaal voor de Europese Unie. Het Latijn werd ook eventjes overwogen, daar waren de Finnen grote voorstanders van. Maar ook dat zou moeilijk liggen, vanwege de connotatie met het katholieke geloof.

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca -De vertaler die ik vorig jaar interviewde liet me ook verstaan dat de grenzen nu wel bereikt zijn en dat er absoluut verandering moet komen. Denkt u er ook zo over? Kunt u misschien een voorspelling doen naar de toekomst toe? Ja, ik begrijp de vertalers en tolken wel hoor. Het is echt zo dat men wat lucht nodig heeft, ruimte om te werken. Nu loopt iedereen een beetje op de tippen van zijn tenen. Maar het is altijd moeilijk als het om het Europees Parlement gaat. Er zijn bepaalde eisen wat betreft de mogelijkheid tot communicatie met alle burgers, en je kan simpelweg niet eisen van Europarlementariërs dat ze enkel verkiesbaar zijn als ze bepaalde talen kennen. En dan zit je ook met de inhoudelijke verbanden die al te vaak met het Engels gelegd worden, als dat Engels gebruikt wordt als lingua franca. Maar het gaat ook gewoon verder dan simpelweg 23 verschillende talen. Het Nederlands in Vlaanderen en het Nederlands in Nederland is ook zeer uiteenlopend op bepaalde vlakken. Ik laat mijn studenten vaak mee luisteren met bepaalde plenaire zittingen van het Parlement, om hen uit te leggen hoe alles werkt. Nu, de meeste Nederlandstalige tolken zijn Belgen. Dus als ik, als Nederlandse, aan mijn Nederlandse studenten die Vlaamse tolk laat horen, dan vinden zij dat lachwekkend. Omdat dat Belgisch Nederlands nu eenmaal zo verschilt van het Nederlands Nederlands. En dan zit je nog eens met al die contextuele verschillen. De context van verschillende talen is gewoon radicaal anders. Maar goed, elke keer opnieuw hoor je diezelfde hulpkreet: “Deze keer aal het niet meer lukken. Nu zijn de grenzen bereikt.” En toch vindt men er elke keer weer een oplossing voor. Maar nogmaals, ik begrijp die tolk wel, hoor. Er wordt ook zoveel gevraagd van tolken en vertalers. Ze kregen heel vaak een hoop gezeur om hun hoofd, omdat het te lang duurt of omdat het niet meteen goed zit en dergelijke. Maar tegelijkertijd doen ze ook heel veel en zijn ze brood- broodnodig. Maar ze hebben gewoon wat meer lucht nodig, ademruimte. Maar met de uitbreiding die nu binnenkort volgt, zal het nog wel lukken, schat ik. Het Turks, het Kroatisch, … dat zijn niet zulke moeilijke talen, qua structuur. Het Bulgaars was zeer moeilijk om op te vangen. Maar nu, … Ik denk wel dat het nog zal lukken, met 2, 3 of 4 talen erbij. Maak je maar niet teveel zorgen.

9.6 Written document: Basic information on interpreting in the EP

Martin Wooding – 21th March 2011

Multilingualism in the European Parliament

The European Parliament is a multilingual parliament, reflecting the linguistic diversity of Europe. If the Parliament did not respect all the official languages of Europe, then it would not represent the people of Europe, nor would it communicate with them.

In 2010, about 109,000 interpreter-days were worked in the European Parliament, making it the foremost user of interpreting services in the world, ahead of other individual EU

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca institutions.1 On an average day of the part-session in Strasbourg over 1,000 interpreters work to serve the different meetings of MEPs.

Interpretation is available in 23 official languages. There are internal rules on the way in which interpretation is allocated. Full language coverage is provided in the plenary sessions, where each language version is web-streamed and recorded in a public sound archive. The largest political groups, with members from every EU country, also have a right in principle to the full range of languages for group meetings. A variable language regime, depending on membership, is provided for the meetings of smaller political groups, committees, delegations, and working parties.

The Interpretation Directorate of the European Parliament

The Directorate General for Interpretation and Conferences of the European Parliament (DG INTE) employs about 330 permanent interpreters. To cope with peaks of activity, it also recruits freelance interpreters, who are paid on a daily basis and who account for about 50% of the total annual workload. Freelances are recruited from a list of about 2,800 names, according to quality, language combination and availability.

The service is headed by Ms Olga Cosmidou.

How interpretation works

Interpretation may be simultaneous (when the interpreter works in a soundproof booth linked to the meeting room) or consecutive (when the interpreter sits with delegates and interprets them after they have spoken). The vast majority of meetings in the European Parliament are interpreted simultaneously, in meeting rooms designed to accommodate a large number of booths. Not every interpreter can know 23 languages (though six or seven is not unusual). To interpret simultaneously a language they don't know, the interpreter will work indirectly from a version supplied by a colleague in another booth. This process is called relay interpretation, and the colleague who supplies the direct version is called the pivot.

The profile of an interpreter

A good interpreter must know their languages extremely well. They must have an especially good command of the languages into which they work actively. They must be able to concentrate and to analyse statements very rapidly. They should be able to speak confidently and present themselves well in public. They must be curious and open-minded about the world, and keep themselves well informed. They have to be quite flexible, because their

1 There are three independent interpreting services in the EU, serving different institutions.

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca services may be required at all times of the day or under difficult circumstances. Perfectionism is not a virtue, because even good interpreters make mistakes at times and have to learn from them.

A good deal of determination is also required to survive in a profession which is competitive and where (for freelances) work is not always in stable supply.

Conditions to interpret for the European Parliament

As a formal requirement, applicants must hold a recognised university degree or postgraduate qualification in conference interpreting. Alternatively, they can hold a recognised university degree in any subject, provided they can show proof of sufficient previous experience in consecutive and simultaneous conference interpreting.

To become a freelance (ACI, or Auxiliary Conference Interpreter) they must first pass an accreditation exam, in which their work is tested by a panel of interpreters from the EU institutions.

To become a permanent interpreter, they must pass an open competition organised by the European Personnel Selection Office (EPSO).

As interpreters work in teams, the quality of their daily work is monitored by their more experienced colleagues.

Interpreter training

The responsibility for training interpreters lies essentially with the universities in the Member States, under the principle of subsidiarity. The European Parliament can provide financial and personnel support in case of languages which are in particularly short supply. Some postgraduate courses provide a European Masters in Conference Interpreting (EMCI), which is recognised and supported by the EU institutions. The courses providing this qualification are linked by an academic network which helps to maintain training standards.

Once interpreters qualify to work for the European Parliament they are actively helped to learn new languages.

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Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca 101

Is absolute multilingualism maintainable? The language policy of the European Parliament and the threat of English as a lingua franca