Which languages are in use in the Parliament?
There are 24 official EU languages. Supporting communications in so many languages ensures that citizens can access and better understand the EU laws that affect them. Citizens can interact with the EU institutions by, for example, submitting petitions or requesting information in any of the official languages, and they can follow debates in the Parliament via live web streaming.
Moreover, when conducting parliamentary business, it is important for MEPs to be able to speak, listen, read and write in their own language and, in fact, in any of the EU's official languages. This is because it is a fundamental democratic principle that every EU citizen can become a Member of the European Parliament, even if he or she does not speak a foreign language. Additionally, to guarantee the same working conditions for all MEPs, they must have full access to information in their respective languages. MEP speeches in one official language are simultaneously interpreted into other official languages, and official texts are translated into all 24 languages. For EU legislation to be directly applied or transposed into national legislation, it must first be translated into the official EU language of each Member State.
The departure of the United Kingdom from the EU has not resulted in the abolition of English as an official language. All EU governments would need to decide on that unanimously, and English remains an official language in Ireland and Malta.
The work of an interpreter or translator
In general, each interpreter and translator works in his/her mother tongue. With 24 official languages, there are 552 possible language combinations. To cope with this challenge, the Parliament sometimes uses a system of "relay" languages whereby a speaker or a text is first interpreted or translated into one of the most widely used languages (English, French or German), and then into others.
Interpretation and translation are different professions: interpreters render one language into another orally in real time during meetings; translators work with written documents, producing an exact translation of the document in the target language. European Parliament interpreters are trained in relaying the messages of the MEPs. Moreover, given the specialisation of parliamentary debates, they are supported by the administration in preparing the specific meetings they are assigned to, and in keeping abreast of developments in the languages they work from. As skilled linguists, they provide a high-quality service to all MEPs.
Translators are also involved in other linguistic mediation tasks, such as adapting texts for podcasts, subtitling and audio recording in 24 languages.