Corante

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CORANTE John Yunker is founder of Byte Level Research and author of the widely acclaimed book, Beyond Borders: Web Globalization Strategies and editor of Global By Design.

He has covered the emerging field of Web globalization for half a decade and has published a wide range of reports dedicated to best practices in Web localization and internationalization.
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Going Global focuses on the risks and rewards of expanding into new geographic and cultural markets, from Web globalization to international marketing to global usability.
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The official newsletter of the Web globalization revolution.
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June 1, 2004

EU Translation Crisis Update

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Posted by John Yunker

According to this BBC article, the European Union translation backlog is becoming a serious problem. EU beaurocrats have been told to keep documents to fewer than 15 pages to help translators get caught up. According to the article:

    Prior to EU enlargement on 1 May, there was a backlog of 6,000 pages still awaiting translation -- but with enlargement this problem has increased tenfold.

    With Estonian, Czech, Hungarian, Latvian, Maltese, Lithuanian, Polish, Slovak and Slovene now on the list of official EU languages there are an estimated 60,000 pages to plough through

Will English become the lingua franca of the EU? More than a few members are pushing for such a change, but I wouldn't hold my breath. The European Union is a great experiment in pan-cultural unity; expecting countries to compromise on language would be asking a bit too much at this stage. And, as the French are quick to point out, why should the lingua franca of the EU be English?

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