Strasbourg, 11/07/2007 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament has called on the institutions to “take the appropriate measures to further improve the productivity of the EU translation services”. In Strasbourg on Tuesday 10 July, the EP adopted the report by Alexander Stubb (EPP-ED, Finland) on the European Court of Auditors (ECA) report on translation expenditure (see EUROPE 9265 on the ECA's special report), highlighting that the total cost of all the linguistic services of the EU institutions (translation and interpretation combined) represents only 1% of the total EU budget. It noted that, in 2005, the volume of translations was 1,324,000 pages in the Commission (1,450 translators), 1,080,000 pages in the Parliament (550 translators) and 475,000 pages in the Council (660 translators).
Cost of translations. The Parliament welcomed the fact that the EU, despite enlargement, had managed to reduce translation costs by page. It welcomed the fact that the Commission and the Council had managed to limit the increase in translation volume after the EU10 enlargement. It was, however, concerned about the ECA's observation that the productivity of the Council's translations service was low. It noted too that the prices it paid for freelance translators were on average 12% higher than the prices paid by the Commission. The EP also noted its agreement on the principle that verbatim reports of proceedings in the plenary should be published as a multi-lingual document in which the statements of the speakers only appear in the original language of the statement, “on the understanding that filmed versions of the debates, together with lived interpretation into all the official languages be made available free of charge to the general public on demand”. It felt that MEPs must be entitled to have access to extracts of debates translated into their own languages.
Quality of translations. According to a customer satisfaction survey carried out by the Court of Auditors, the quality and speed of translations into the EU15 languages were considered generally satisfactory. The EP was, however, concerned by the “considerably lower quality” of the EU10 translations in some institutions in 2004, mainly caused by a lack of qualified translators. It noted that, in the meantime, the Commission had addressed the problem and that all institutions, with the help of the member states, had made progress in recruiting qualified translators. All the institutions were called on to set up tools for measuring user satisfaction.
Managing translation demands. The ECA criticised ambiguous procedures for requesting translations, and also unclear guidelines with regard to which documents had to be translated, and which did not. The EP welcomed the commitment of the Commission to review the authorisation procedure and to screen translation requests in 2006. It also welcomed that, in 2003, the Council established a list of core documents, thereby limiting the translation of other texts. (lc)