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Recommendations
EU institutions
15. There must
be proper briefing for Members of the European Parliament
on how the translation and interpretation services
operate, since there is evidence that MEPs are ‘ignorant
about many aspects of what multilingualism involves’ .
16. There should be similar briefing for politicians, experts
and civil servants who work in member states and attend meetings
in EU institutions on the principles underlying interpretation
and translation, and the constraints that may account for
complete, direct interpretation not always being provided.
17. A Code of Language Conduct in EU Institutions should
be elaborated. This should aim at ensuring complete equality
for everyone in EU interaction, irrespective of mother tongue.
It should be monitored by the EU Ombud institution, which
deals with specific complaints but aims at also ensuring
good administrative practice, but has not yet been given
a mandate for this .
18. If the Council of Ministers were to consider any change
in Regulation 1, for instance introduction of a de jure two-tier
system according ‘big’ languages more rights
than other languages, no decision should be taken before
there has been an in-depth study of the consequences of any
such decision for all the languages concerned, and study
of alternative solutions. Such studies would need to be based
on prior identification of criteria and principles that should
be followed when language regimes are being decided on.
19. Special attention should be paid to the implications
of an increasing use of English for speakers of other languages.
This is a significant issue for people based permanently
in Brussels or Luxembourg, for those attending meetings there
irregularly, and for European civil society as a whole. Policies
that favour English, as a procedural language, or as a sole
link language with applicant states, or in correspondence
between EU institutions and member states, should not be
adopted without proper analysis of the implications for speakers
of each official language, and only after a transparent consultation
process. Monitoring procedures should be implemented to ensure
the rights of speakers of all official languages.
20. The EU must develop active policies that counteract linguistic
discrimination. Employment in EU institutions, or in bodies
funded by the EU, must at all levels require bilingual or
multilingual competence. Recruitment must never discriminate
in favour of native speakers of a language, either de jure
or de facto. Myths about the superior merits of any language,
or about assumed linguistic competence due to the accident
of birth, need to be effectively dispelled.
21. There needs to be more coordination between the language
services in EU institutions and national language policy
authorities, covering such matters as the training of translators
and interpreters, efforts to improve the quality and accessibility
of texts, terminology, use of databases, citizen access,
and users’ experience of the language services and
suggestions for improving these .
22. There should be regular monitoring by EU insiders and
outsiders of the operation of the system of working and procedural
languages in EU institutions, and the availability or otherwise
of texts in all languages when documents are sent out to
the governments and citizens of member states. When the internet
is used so as to make papers available early in the decision-making
process, as part of a policy of ensuring greater transparency,
it is essential that documents are available in all official
languages simultaneously.
23. There needs to be regular monitoring of the functioning
of EU language services when full interpretation is not provided,
for instance use of the SALT system, Speak All, Listen Three
(i.e. interpretation is provided from all languages but only
into English, French and German), which some MEPs would like
to see extended , and of the efficacy of the system in Commission
or Council meetings when some speak a foreign language.
24. Serious consideration should be given to the use of Esperanto
as a bridging or pivot language for the spoken and written
word in EU-internal communication, to calculating the economic
costs in the short term for learning the language, and the
longer-term economic savings that could result from implementation
of an Esperanto-based system. In parallel there should be
pilot studies and assessment of the implications for language
learning in schools, when Esperanto is learned as the first
foreign language, and as a bridge to learning others, where
the research evidence is that this is likely to provide all
learners with successful experience of a new language.
25. As lobbyism is a fact of Brussels life, there being over
2000 lobbying groups with a permanent office in Brussels,
most of them representing commercial interests, but none
specifically concerned with languages (with the exception
of an office representing the interests of ‘francophonie’,
and the EU-funded European Bureau for Lesser Used Languages),
thought needs to be given to how language policy interests
can be better covered by lobbies that should preferably receive
funding from a variety of sources.
26. A number of specific recommendations for strengthening
multilingualism in the EU are made under point 4 of the Vienna
Manifesto (on working languages, consistent multilingualism,
terminology, funding for translations, simultaneous interpretation,
translation quality, teacher exchanges, research funding).
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