Technical innovation at the service of translation was the focus of the debates held in the framework of the #TranslatingEUROPE 2016 forum, which took place in Brussels on Thursday 27 and Friday 28 October.
This annual forum brings together all stakeholders in translation within the European institutions, to discuss subjects of common interest such as technology, employment, professionalism, quality and the new technology in this profession.
The outgoing vice-president of the European Commission with responsibility for human resources, Kristalina Georgieva, stressed that linguistic diversity is a fundamental value of the EU and that translators are the bridge that allows the 500 million people living in the EU to understand its policies, and also to move closer to each other.
It was in this framework that the commissioner hailed the technological changes that will gradually automate translation within the institutions of the Union. These new technological innovations bring with them new challenges and new opportunities for translation, a profession that is vitally important in the EU, she said.
On the following day, the Commission, European Parliament and Council of the EU presented the tools they are currently developing internally, which they hope will revolutionise translation in the coming years.
Pascale Chartier-Brun, a head of unit at the Parliament, presented the new 'CAT for Trad' translation tool, which will translate all legislative and non-legislative texts of the Parliament. She explained that the tool is multilingual, easy to use, allows translators to navigate freely between texts in different languages and will soon translate 80% of all texts circulating within the institution.
The Council of the EU is developing a new terminology tool, 'MicroHint'. This tool, which is user-friendly, minimalistic and practical, allows the standardisation of new terms proposed by translators that are not yet listed within the institutions, said Krzysztof Szcurèk, a terminologist and translator employed by the European institution. The aim is to fill in the consistency gaps caused by the use of terms that have not yet been laid down in the language, he added.
Lastly, the Commission presented 'CateLab', a sort of open network aiming to allow IT specialists, translators and any other individual to test out and experiment with the various translation tools on a voluntary basis, so that they can give feedback on how they can be improved.
With a staff of more than 2,500 people, working out of and into the 24 official languages of the European Union, the translation services of the Commission are one of the largest translation services in the world, with a total annual budget in the region of €14 million. (Original version in French by Thomas Régnier)