Squabbling Europeans
Well, I guess this decision sort of makes sense...
Now, I'm tempted to call their bluff on this one. Italian is not a difficult language; I was there for a week in 2003 and I was able to pick up enough with a phrase book and by listening to get by, so this claim that Italian interpreters are unavailable is rubbish. I'll agree that including Lithuanian, Finnish, and Czech translators may be somewhat impractical; those languages are only spoken in their home countries.
There's no question that English, French, and German are the most commonly spoken languages among the European Union member states. For example, German and French are widely spoken in Luxembourg as administrative languages. English is spoken in the United Kingdom and Ireland. German is the primary language in Germany and Austria, and an administrative language in Luxembourg (all three being members of the E.U.), as well as Liechtenstein and Switzerland. French is the official language of France and Luxembourg, and widely spoken in Belgium... Anyway, I think I've made my point. Italian is, however, one of the major European languages, and widely spoken.
It can't take that much effort to include a couple of widely spoken languages beyond English, German, and French. It's moves like this that aggravate European Union members, because it's just a further demonstration that the French and Germans in particular see themselves as the leaders of the European Union. If that's your attitude, then it's a pretty poor "union", isn't it?
Italy has complained at EU Commission plans to drop Italian translation from some of its press briefings.
In a letter to the president of the commission, the Italian ambassador to the EU asked why Italian was "relegated to a completely secondary division".
Some Italian newspapers have joined in the row and European Affairs Minister Rocco Buttiglione called the commission's move "unacceptable".
The EU denied Italy was being singled out and said the move was pragmatic.
Until now, EU Commission press conferences have been translated in the 20 official EU languages. Last week, it decided only English, French and German would be automatically translated.
"We have to consider the unavailability of interpreters and their costs," EU Commission spokeswoman Francoise Le Bail was quoted by the Associated Press news agency as saying.
Now, I'm tempted to call their bluff on this one. Italian is not a difficult language; I was there for a week in 2003 and I was able to pick up enough with a phrase book and by listening to get by, so this claim that Italian interpreters are unavailable is rubbish. I'll agree that including Lithuanian, Finnish, and Czech translators may be somewhat impractical; those languages are only spoken in their home countries.
There's no question that English, French, and German are the most commonly spoken languages among the European Union member states. For example, German and French are widely spoken in Luxembourg as administrative languages. English is spoken in the United Kingdom and Ireland. German is the primary language in Germany and Austria, and an administrative language in Luxembourg (all three being members of the E.U.), as well as Liechtenstein and Switzerland. French is the official language of France and Luxembourg, and widely spoken in Belgium... Anyway, I think I've made my point. Italian is, however, one of the major European languages, and widely spoken.
It can't take that much effort to include a couple of widely spoken languages beyond English, German, and French. It's moves like this that aggravate European Union members, because it's just a further demonstration that the French and Germans in particular see themselves as the leaders of the European Union. If that's your attitude, then it's a pretty poor "union", isn't it?
1 Comments:
Well, yeah, and I think I made that point, but I think that Italy's one of the major countries of the EU. If it were me, I'd use the languages of the nations that are going to field a battle group, plus Germany. That's English, Spanish, French, German, and Italian. Excluding Italian and Spanish for the benefit of English, German, and French seems a bit elitist to me.
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