Brussels, 05/11/2008 (Agence Europe) - The President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, and EU Multilingualism Commissioner Leonard Orban have invited sixteen translators, writers, publishers and literary critics of various nationalities to a dinner-debate on translation and culture in Brussels on Thursday 6 November 2008. In the morning, the participants will discuss translation as a key to intercultural dialogue and an intellectual bridge between 'big' and 'small' languages and also as a bridge between stakeholders. Orban said he saw translation as an expression of multilingualism, noting that a society is multilingual when its citizens can speak several languages of course, but also when the languages that are spoken are continuously communicated through translation. This debate will be followed by a conference in April 2009 on literary translation, aiming to boost the status of literary translation along with translation in the broadest sense. (I.L. trans fl)