Europe's Babel

Brussels correspondent László Szőcs notes that English, French and German are increasingly becoming the lingua franca among Europe's citizens, yet the EU institutions continue to insist on a multilingual approach and translate official documents into all 21 official languages of the EU. "The language chaos within EU institutions has reached Babel-like proportions, and this is also having an impact at an administrative level. Gallic recently became the EU's 21st official language, and Romanian and Bulgarian are soon to follow. Three regional languages spoken in Spain – Catalan, Basque and Galician – have been granted special status... The costs for written and spoken translation add up to almost a billion euros per year. In an attempt to justify the creation of the post of EU commissioner for multilingual affairs, the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, quoted the words of the famous Italian author Umberto Eco: 'The language of Europe is translation'."

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