A tribute to the linguists

The European Parliament couldn't cope without its interpreters and translators, diligently rendering our best and worst prose into other languages. They are taken for granted most of the time, beavering away behind glass (interpreters at meetings - whom we can at least see) or at distance (translators of texts - whom we rarely meet), though the occasional mistake can give rise to much confusion. It is also not unknown for Members to blame the linguists for their own mistakes, or to get out of a tight corner ("I didn't really call you an XXX - honest - it must have been a mistake by the interpreter!").

But just how skillful a job it is has just been brought home to me again by looking at the translation of my own report on the Lisbon Treaty, especially the "Explanatory Statement", which is annexed to the motion for resolution as background and is not voted on by Parliament, standing as an informal explanatory briefing by the rapporteurs. I and my co-rapporteur, Inigo Mendez de Vigo MEP, with the assistance of José Luis Pacheco of the committee staff, had drafted this in French, as the easiest common language among the three of us, and I was slightly apprehensive about how it would be turned into English - would it sound odd, would there be political hostages to fortune, how would the style seem?

Reading words that stand in your own name, but you have not written in English, so not chosen the exact words, was bound to be hazardous for a potentially controversial political text.

As it turns out, the translators have done a wonderful job, sometimes even seeming to improve on the original, and certainly aware of many of the nuances. The only times I wince are the passages where the style is a bit too flowery for English - because that's the way we wrote them in French, in which just such a style can be normal. There are just a few passages where I would have chosen a different vocabulary, not because it is wrong, but because I know how some people will twist the meanings of words in political debates. But out of more than seventy pages of text, these are mercifully few and far between. Congratulations to the translators!