1686122425 Translating for Europe University of Innsbruck University of Innsbruck Newsroom

Translating for Europe University of Innsbruck University of Innsbruck Newsroom

A woman is standing in a seminar room, students can also be seen from the front, sitting at desks.

Claudia Kropf together with INTRAWI students and teachers.

07/06/2023

Claudia Kropf is a language officer at the EU Commission representation in Vienna, a member of the Directorate General for Translation (DGT) and gave a talk on 20 April 2023 at the Institute for Translation Studies (INTRAWI) on translation into and into the Europe. The EU Language Services is the largest body in Europe managing multilingualism and translation processes.

The European Union represents the principle of multilingualism: all EU citizens have the right to communicate with the EU institutions in one of the 24 official EU languages ​​and, at Spain’s request, also in Basque, Catalan and Galician. Linguistic diversity is potentially increasing as each enlargement of the Union introduces new languages. Translation or linguistic services are necessary to enable communication processes between the association of states and their citizens, as well as between the various organic units of the EU: European Council, European Parliament, European Court of Justice, Committee of the Regions, etc. each one has its own translators in order to do justice to the differentiation of specialties and the need for speed of work. In total, the EU employs around 4,000 highly qualified translators, and around 1,400 of them work in the European Commission’s translation service, mainly in Brussels or Luxembourg, but some also – like Claudia Kropf – in the branches in EU capitals.

In her guest lecture, organized as part of the Translation Management course (Responsible: Martina Mayer), Claudia Kropf presented the functioning of such an immense translation department and the students and professors who participate in person and online – the transmission was transmitted by the partner universities in Vienna and Graz and Zadar – it gives a picture of what daily working life is like there. DGT, headed by Christos Ellinides, is divided into several translation departments organized by language, applying the mother tongue principle: For reasons of quality and efficiency guarantee, all translators work exclusively from the foreign language into the mother tongue. Various software are used to support it, for example IATE (the EU terminology database), CAT tools or eTranslation, a system that automatically creates machine translations and is also available for use by universities, companies, etc. . Thanks to this mix of technologies, translators can produce time-saving target texts, some created in post-editing, others based on previous texts, still others free translations and then proofread. The use of automatic translation in DGT is not mandatory, but in the meantime it has become established among translators. Can the machine do a good enough translation job and is human translation still needed? Claudia Kropf asked students to consider themselves critical users of machine translation tools because “sometimes the machine lies to you and delivers text that is fluent and easy to read – but still wrong”. Machine translation will therefore not become superfluous in the European Union, where mainly political texts on climate protection, construction, digitization, economics, external relations, democracy and the European way of life or legal texts are translated. Flesh and blood translators will not become superfluous; the only thing that changes is the professional profile and skills required for the excellent execution of around 300 translation jobs per day.

In 2022, around 2.6 million pages were translated in the European Commission’s translation service; in the record year of 2021 there were up to 2.8 million pages, due to the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. As translation volumes continue to increase, DGT also works with freelance translators through agencies that act as subcontractors; around 37% of the texts to be translated are outsourced. The original texts are 90% written in English; 2.4% are written in French and only 1% in German. Almost 6% of the texts are written in the other official EU languages, but non-EU languages ​​are also in demand. Currently, there is a great demand for Ukrainian and Russian, but there are also texts written in Indian, Arabic or Mandarin.

Because the EU and the European Commission want to devote due attention to translation processes and national languages, in addition to translation work, other activities of public appeal are implemented: The Juvenes Translatores translation competition is aimed at 17-year-old students * from all about the EU (this year Theresa Drexler from the International School of Kufstein with a Hungarian-German translation); the various events of the Translating Europe Project aim to make new content in translation studies accessible to translation professionals across Europe; and the European Day of Languages, which is celebrated annually on 26 September. is committed stresses the importance of linguistic diversity.

Students on translation courses, such as those offered by INTRAWI, have great opportunities to actively participate in all these processes: DGT regularly seeks interns, contractors and civil servants. Claudia Kropf also brought these attractive career prospects closer to the audience and ended her presentation with an encouragement: “Apply, dare.” INTRAWI thanks Claudia Kropf and the EU language services for their excellent cooperation over the years.

(Martina Mayer, Institute for Translation Studies)