Translation Tool : Parallel sites (3)

Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

The EU (European Union) also boasts its own mega-institutional websites with parallel language construction. The EU has 28 member countries, where 24 different and official national languages are used. The 24 official languages of the EU are the following: Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish and Swedish.  

Approximately 60 minority and indigenous languages are also spoken by 40 million people  in the EU, for example: Welsh, Gaelic, Basque, Catalan and Breton. [Europa – Mulilingualism).  

Per the Langauge policy of the EU, all 24 languages of the EU are used for legislation and key political documents. However, official documents that are not legally binding are published only in French, English and German.  

• The EU official website is EUROPA.eu. Access to general information is available in each of the 24 European languages, using a drop-down menu located in the upper-right corner of the pages, and using the initial splash page portal options. Information in regards the multilingualism of the site specifies that some of the more specialized information is only available in the more widely used languages.
• The Official Journal Publication of the EU is available in the 24 national languages of the EU via the EUR.lex website.
• The EUR-Lex website provides access to European Law – in the 24 languages of the EU. Just use the drop-down menu in the upper-right corner of the site pages to toggle in and out of the 24 parallel universes. An N-Lex-National Law tab also appears in the horizontal toolbar of the site for you to be able to explore the interactions between EU law and the national law of each of the 28 member states, and to access each of the national laws of the member states.
• ERASMUS, celebrated in the popular French-Spanish movie L’auberge Espagnol (2002) (The Spanish Apartment, in English-speaking countries), is the European Union Educational Exchange program, with a 4-million student turnaround!  This site too provides educational information in the 24 languages of the EU, including diploma equivalence information.

References

EUROPA.eu – The European Union website

https://europa.eu/european-union/index_en

EUROPA – Erasmus

http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/erasmus-plus/node_en

EUROPA – Multilingualism

https://europa.eu/european-union/topics/multilingualism_en

EUROPA - Language policy

http://europa.eu/european-union/abouteuropa/language-policy_en 

Eur-Lex

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/homepage.html

Eur-Lex - N-Lex

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/collection/n-law/n-lex.html 

EUR-Lex - Official Journal

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/oj/direct-access.html?locale=en

Sergent, B. (2008) Les indoEuropéens – CLIO – Conservatoire Contemporain de littérature 
orale. https://ssl.clio.fr/BIBLIOTHEQUE/pdf/pdf_les_indo_europeens.pdf