More on EU Language Requirements

A quick addition to my previous entry about the language requirements inside the European Union: New Approach Standardization site gives a list on EU directives for 22 product types at http://www.newapproach.org/Directives/DirectiveList.asp. Omnilingua has made a good summary on the language requirements of these directives at http://www.omnilingua.com/resourcecenter/eulang.aspx, although their list contains only 18 product categories.

Having a look at one of the directives, such as http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:31989L0106:EN:NOT, also gives you an idea about the amount of translation work that happens inside the EU. All the directives have to be available in all EU languages, which keeps translators busy. It could also give the Europeans an advantage in developing solutions e.g. for multilingual content management.

Still, the thought of the US being a monolingual country needs to be revised, too. Spanish has become the second language in the US, with practically all the big companies offering customer service and printed materials also in Spanish. Once a company needs to offer even just one additional language, it will need solutions for handling multilinguality. It is also good to remember that a big part of multilinguality is verbal communication, which requires multilingual personnel. This will create interesting requirements for language teaching both at schools and at work. More on that later.