Today over 80% of the European Commission’s documents are written first in English and then translated
of its life, the European Union had three main languages. German was its leading mother tongue. French was the preferred register of Brussels diplomacy. English was a widely used second language. But in recent years the rise of the internet and the accession of central and eastern European states have made English dominant. Today over 80% of the European Commission’s documents are written first in that language, then translated into theThat has raised some hackles.
Some fret that formalising its pre-eminence would entrench Anglo-Saxon culture and allow English-language publications to dominate. In fact, several big continental media houses—including most of Germany’s major newspapers, Spain’s—now publish online English versions in order to take part in pan-European debates. Formalising English would merely encourage others to follow suit.
Another complaint from the English-bashers is that other political entities, like America, Canada and Switzerland, manage without a single official language. But unlike the, they all have centuries of history as common polities and a strong majority tongue; by contrast, only 18% ofcitizens speak German as their first language. Polyglot India is the nearest international comparator to theThe most compelling objection is that replacing Europe’s babel with a common discourse in English is elitist.
The choice is ultimately not between an Anglophone Europe and a truly polyglot Europe but between wishful thinking and realism. Nicolas Véron, a French economist in Brussels, notes that English is already in effect the working language of thethink-tanks, in 2005. Some 97% of 13-year-olds in theare learning English. The number of English-language university courses has risen from 725 in 2002 to over 8,000.
The biggest barrier is symbolic. “The language of Europe is translation,” wrote Umberto Eco, an Italian author. Theis proud of its everyday multilingualism, which becomes more fluent and accessible with every year as the use of machine translation tools grows. Yet the adoption of English as a common language should be seen not as a challenge but as a complement to this tradition. Europe is about diversity, and its patchwork of languages and dialects must be promoted and protected.
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