Andreas Taes, Translation Service, European Commission

30/03/2001, Brussels

The European Union is at the eve of a new series of enlargements.

The language problem is going to be one of the key issue. The number of combinations will raise form the original 24 in 1950 to a hardly ever manageable 462 language pair.A corresponding increase in translation staff is not an option. Other solutions will have to be investigated: outsourcing, reduction of working languages, two level language status and subsidiarity are only a few of the scenarios that can be taken into consideration. The Translation Services of the European Institutions have been looking for technical,computer-based solutions to attain an equation between the dramatic increase in language combinations and the limited raise in human resources: Computer Assisted Translation. The computer is no longer seen as the ultimate high quality translation machine. The ever-growing computing power will rather be used to manage a huge amount of linguistic resources ranging from simple word lists to the complex fuzzy matching of translation memory entries without neglecting the possible added value of machine translation. The Translation Service of the European Commission has taken a leading role in introducing acommercial product combined with in-house technology.

Computer assisted translation requires new working methods, a workflow approach and last but not least a well thought and intensive training scheme.