Europa aan vreemde talen, 24-02-2007 (A-LC)

Van onze correspondent
BRUSSEL – Hoe meer talen, hoe meer vreugd. Alsof de Babylonische spraakverwarring in Brussel nog niet groot genoeg is, wil Europees commissaris Leonard Orban de meertaligheid een nieuwe impuls geven. Nu al telt de Europese Unie 23officiële talen, maar als het aan de Roemeen ligt, worden dat er nog véél meer. Het Ierse Gaelic is al een officiële EU-taal geworden, dus waarom niet het Baskisch, Letzeburgs of het Fries?

Tot ergernis van Orban zijn Engels en Frans werktalen geworden. De Roemeense eurocommissaris ziet in meertaligheid juist voordelen en uitdagingen. Toen dit jaar bekend werd dat er een ‘taalcommissaris’ zou komen, was de reactie lacherig. De functie werd gecreëerd om de net toegetreden Roemenen aan een commissariaat te helpen. Tot dan toe werd de taalportefeuille er door een andere commissaris bij gedaan. Orban moet er nu echter een dagtaak van maken.

Dat doet hij met verve. Gisteren presenteerde hij een stortvloed aan ideeën om de Europeanen aan de vreemde talen te krijgen. Juist in de uitbreidende EU is het kunnen spreken van talen een groot voordeel. Uit een Brits onderzoek blijkt dat 11 procent van de kleine en middelgrote ondernemingen orders misloopt door gebrekkige talenkennis van de werknemers. Gemiddeld kost dat per bedrijf € 328.000 omzet.

Volgend jaar komt Orban daarom met een ‘strategie voor de meertaligheid’. Alvast één punt daaruit: weg met het nasynchroniseren! Films in de bioscopen of op de televisie moeten vaker ondertiteld worden. Dat is een uitstekende manier om vreemde talen te leren, meent Orban. Ook wil hij extra geld om tolken en vertalers op te leiden en boeken te laten vertalen.

Boarne: Leeuwarder Courant, 24-02-2007

FFU:  Lês as taljochting it ûndersteande ferhaal fan Orban:

European Commission: Multilingualism boosts European competitiveness, moving from multiculturalism to interculturalism

Bruxelles - Brussel, Friday, 23 February 2007 by Davyth Hicks   

Commissioner for Multilingualism, Leonard Orban
Each year, thousands of European companies lose business and miss out on contracts as a result of their lack of language skills, according to a study carried out for the European Commission during 2006 by CILT, the UK National Centre for Languages, published today.

The findings suggest that there is enormous potential for small businesses in Europe to increase their total exports if they invest more in languages and develop coherent language strategies. Recent research shows that companies that enhance their language skills can exploit better the business opportunities in the EU’s internal market, which, with nearly half a billion people, is the world’s largest.

“Far from being an unwelcome cost to doing business", European Commissioner for Multilingualism, Leonard Orban, said, "investing in language skills can dramatically improve a company’s business opportunities. I plan to place multilingualism at the heart of the Lisbon strategy for more growth and jobs.”

The study, entitled “Effects on the European Economy of Shortages of Foreign Language Skills in Enterprise“, is the first attempt at European level to estimate the cost to EU business of not having foreign language skills. The data in the study is based on a sample of 2000 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across Europe, correlated with information from 30 multinational companies and a group of experts from the countries involved, and supplemented by a set of case studies.

New initiatives
Meanwhile in a separate press release, "a political agenda for multilingualism", the Commission re-affirmed its commitment to promoting lifelong learning and linguistic diversity with new initiatives and with two reports to be finalised in 2007: "Promoting Language Learning and Linguistic Diversity" referring to implementation of the 2004-2006 Action Plan, and the report on "Diversity of language teaching offered in the EU".

The Commission also pointed to the Lifelong Learning Programme which will provide financial means for language projects; it will be addressed to all languages, including regional and minority languages. Support for multilingualism will be one of the overarching priorities across all the projects of this programme.

The Commission added that, "Subtitling is a spectacular tool for helping people learn languages easily and enjoyably. A series of meetings will therefore take place in order to exploit this potential of the media with regard to language learning."

"It should not be forgotten that language learning is a crucial vector for intercultural awareness and understanding," said the Commission. "Therefore, a contribution of multilingualism to intercultural dialogue must be guaranteed. Indeed, it is only by learning languages that one can move from a multi-cultural society to a truly inter-cultural one. 2008 will be the European year of intercultural dialogue."

A High Level Group of intellectuals and practitioners of multilingualism has also been set up and will be meeting in March.

Towards a new strategy
Concluding the Commission state that : "The multilingualism portfolio has a significant horizontal dimension, inter-acting closely with other policies of the European Union, such as culture, education, communication, social policy, employment, justice, liberty and security, etc. Therefore, its contribution to the development and shaping of EU policies - both internal and external - should be further examined and the benefits promoted wherever possible.

"Gathering ideas and suggestions from Member States and stakeholders in the field is therefore essential in order to build new policies reflecting their needs. This will be done in the framework of the High Level Group on multilingualism, which will present its conclusions on 26th September,  and a Ministerial conference on multilingualism, which will be organised at the beginning of next year. All these ideas will provide a basis for a Communication outlining a new strategy on multilingualism - to be presented during the second half of 2008." (Eurolang 2007)

The executive summary of the study is available at:
http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/07/79&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=fr

The complete study is published on the following website:
http://ec.europa.eu/education/policies/lang/key/studies_en.html

For more information on the languages in the EU, see:
http://europa.eu/languages/

A political agenda for multilingualism (in 22 languages)
http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/07/80&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN

Boarne: Eurolang Newsletter

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