Translating Europe

1. The project, the objectives

“Translating Europe” is a project born from the desire to create a new platform designed to bring together the various representatives of the translation industry around the EU. It reaches out towards the translation industry at large, be it in the public or in the private sector, as well as a large number of language associations.

Additionally, one of the main components of this international enterprise is to create a connection between the universities that are part of the European Masters’ in   translation network (of which the University of Grenoble is a member) and the main actors of the market.

As a result, Translating Europe has been able to rekindle the flame of translation inside the institutions of the EU, and to put in place a strict set of rules and regulations that defines the expectations that one can have in regard to the translation’s requirements  And, of course, the amount of cooperative projects between all of the member states has never been higher and more diversified.  

A yearly conference is held in Brussels in order to define the guidelines of the project, and to present the many accomplishments done by the members in every possible domain of translation, and several smaller workshops are regularly organized all around the EU for the smaller local initiatives.

2. The main conference

As explained above, the main event of “Translating Europe” takes place in the form of a yearly conference held at the beginning of November in Brussels. This year of course, due to the pandemic that struck the world, the 7th edition of this gathering had to be held online and, ironically, the topic of the year was… online platforms and their influence in the translation market.

A happy coincidence that must have charmed our colleagues in these strange times, but let’s get back on track. Normally, the conference lasts for two days, and brings together 500 professionals from the language industry. Speakers from the private and public sectors alike take the stage, and while they may talk about general trends and changes in the industry, they can also review and share their accomplishments as translators.

In the end, this sharing of various feats is of tremendous help for the industry as a whole, and can offer solutions for the same problems that the other translators would encounter during their work. It is, as you would imagine, on par with the current objectives of the EU: it is full-scale co-operation, rather than blind competition, that will allow us to reach even further heights, as individuals, as well as societies.    

3. The workshops

Now a once-in-a-year conference is a great opportunity, but it is surely not enough to appeal to all the Member States. One of the biggest criticisms against the EU has always been how its decisions were most of the time driven by “the bigger picture”, and left behind the smallest actors within the industries of Europe. The Institution has a great deal of efforts to counter these arguments, and the translation field also had to take steps in that direction.

The “Translating Europe Workshops” are local initiatives organized by the Directorate-General for translation representatives present in each Member State, most of the time under the form of a co-operative project with the Universities of the European Masters in translation.

These workshops aim to tackle extremely specific issues of the translation industry; local language professionals are asked to speak up and propose solutions to these issues so as to enlighten the attendants on what kind of troubles (or trends) they will have to deal with once they are out of the university. The objective is clear: it is to build, from the very beginning of a translator’s career, a relationship based on trust between the newcomers and the international institutions they are very likely to work with at some point during their journey.      

4. What are we to expect?

“Translating Europe” will likely evolve hand in hand with the industry, as one of its main goals is to inform the attendants of the latest trends in the industry. However, as with all other domains, the Corona pandemic put a strain on all the projects that were planned or already happening. Nobody could have predicted such a radical outbreak to take place, nor what would be put in place to counter its effects.

As of 2021, teleworking from your home has become a worldwide habit, something that the translation market adapted quite quickly as it was already the norm for a large number of freelance professionals. What suffered the most as always, were the structures that were not flexible enough to accommodate these changes: a topic that the next Brussels meeting will surely broach?

The recent events did not really cause a revolution in the practice of our work, as most of those changes were already underway before, but it has most definitely accelerated those changes, and forced the hands of many actors who thought that they would have the time to adapt. 

Thus, “Translating Europe”, will support the language professionals in this new era, or rather should we say, the translators will all adapt and lend each other a helping hand.

Lefebvre Alex