In our global village, monolingual citizens will be the illiterates of the years to come

Summarized below are the top four areas that I found to be most interesting during the all-day session last month, whose official title was Conference for the Presentation of the Study on the Size of the Language Industry in the EU.

Editor's Note: If you're interested in the full webcast, click here.

If you're interested in downloading a copy of the report delivered to the EU by the LTC, click here and then choose "Full report" or "Executive Summary" in the green box on the right side.

1. Why the Numbers Matter So Much

As always, Mr. Lönnoth was very eloquent and persuasive as to why Europe's citizens really need to know the size of the language industry in Europe. (The link to the webcast above includes separate links for both his opening and closing remarks.)

In a nutshell, we need to know because (1) the language industry is the oil that enables European companies to create and maintain jobs, especially as they face very strong competition from Asia; and (2) the newly ratified Lisbon Treaty guarantees equal access to information within the EU, regardless of language (among other categories).

If you're wondering what the EU spends on multilingualism, it may surprise you at how low the figure really is:

It is slightly <1% of the EU's total budget.

The EU budget itself is about 1% of the combined GDP of all 27 Member States.

That means that the 1.1 billion euros that the EU spends on multiligualism is just 1/10th of 1/1000th of the total wealth of the EU.

Of the 1.8 million pages translated by the European Commission, approximately 25% of this is outsourced at a cost of about 12 to 15 million euros.

Here are a few highlights from Mr. Lönnoth's remarks:

• Mapping this constantly and rapidly changing world is the only way that we can discover its borders, understand its dynamics and position ourselves strategically to influence future developments and turn them to our common advantage.
• Without a firm idea of the shape and size of the industry, all discussion about its advantages and limitations is bound to be based on pre-conceived ideological positions. I have seen how much witchcraft there is in this debate! The media tend to portray the multilingualism policy of the EU as a cost factor and nothing else, merely a burden. If this were the case, then the analysis of what happens out there in the private sector should confirm that we are wasting taxpayers' money and that there are more efficient ways of meeting the challenge of language diversity. However, the trends definitely support what has been the European Union's stance from the very beginning. Namely, far from driving the EU towards an English-only society, the combined forces of globalization and localization, the growing integration of linguistic communities and the constant development of new technological tools are producing some surprising effects. They are even giving a new lease on life to minority languages that, just a few years ago, seemed to be on the brink of extinction.

It is critical to connect language to entrepreneurship in the minds of young people

• By clearly demonstrating the language industry's economic value to society, we can change the paradigm from a focus on costs to benefits. The next step will be to build the brand, which will attract more investment. As growth and recognition continue to build, the language professions will become more attractive and help to grow the labor market. And the investment in language technology to increase jobs should lead to increased university funding for these areas.

  Just as with the legal profession, where there are perhaps fewer positions for lawyers open, the number of jobs where a law degree enables a person to be employed is growing. The same can be said of the language industry. The share of jobs where you must have linguistic expertise may not be increasing, but the ones where it is an added value is increasing.



• Only the mediation of professional linguists can make sure that we understand the user instructions of our mobile phones, or that this coffee- or tea-grower complies with European rules on pesticides or genetically modified seeds.

Globalization goes hand-in-hand with the growth of the language industry

• The language services industry is, in some ways, comparable to the financial services sector, in that it is not an end in itself. But, it's essential for most commercial transactions. Without it - without dubbing, without subtitling, without international conferences, without translated patents and contracts, without the learning that takes place in various languages in large, multinational corporations - the whole process of globalization would immediately grind to a halt.
• The healthy development of the language industry will generate highly skilled jobs, give our businesses a competitive advantage on international markets, and last, but certainly not least, create a truly European knowledge society and a political arena in which true exchanges will replace prejudice and gut feelings. In the EU 2020 agenda, which the Commission is currently drafting and which has recently been sent out for consultation Europe-wide, the language industry will be a powerful catalyst in fields such as knowledge and innovation, mobility, social integration, and undoubtedly many, many more.

2. The Report Itself - Just a Start

Due to the lack of any uniform data gathering mechanism across the EU, it wasn't possible for the LTC to provide any real concrete data in which all of us could be confident. The report underscored the critical need for a mechanism to be implemented, so that data can be tracked on a regular basis across all 27 EU Member States.

As Mr. Lönnroth explained, the real value of this initial research will be gained as we build on it and use it to encourage disciplined data gathering and data harmonization across the Member States. LTC was able to develop a searchable database with 200+ professional groups and a set of country fact sheets, which will serve to encourage the collection and harmonization of more data. The country fact sheets include turnover numbers for the language industry, where the resources are spent, which sectors people are employed in, etc. They are incomplete, but they are a start on providing facts and figures.

For more precise and accurate figures on both the demand and supply sides for the European language market, listen to Nataly Kelly's (Common Sense Advisory) presentation here (scroll down towards the bottom).

One interesting factoid from the just-published CSA research:

Only 10% of European language service providers (LSPs) have >100 employees, but it doesn't mean their revenues aren't high. For example, a company may have just a few employees in Europe, 100 employees in China and USD 2 million in revenue.

3. Controversy About the Value of Quality in Today's "Always On, Always Multilingual" World

For obvious reasons, there continues to be a very high commitment to delivering the "highest quality possible" for most translated deliverables within the European Commission. However, as heretical as it may sound, this may not really be a viable option much longer. Why? Due to the virtualization of the supply chain. Not because of the cost, actually, but rather due to the sheer volume and due to the fact that translation/localization services management for European languages is beginning to move to China as they follow corporate R&D centers.

The whole quality issue plays into the question of resources, as always. The EU and its Member States may eventually need to reach out to to places like E. Africa and to their own local immigrant communities to collaborate on ensuring required levels of quality, rather than attempting to regulate bad quality. This outreach could include training and certification programs to meet the new requirements of the recently ratified Lisbon Treaty.

(I expressed these opinions during the Roundtable discussion in the afternoon, and a few brave souls were willing to support me - this being Europe, people were polite enough not to hurl rotten tomatoes at me, but I'm sure that some of them would have liked to!).

For more on these issues, and the Roundtable discussion in general, click here (scroll down).

4. The Swiss Approach

Switzerland may not be a full Member State of the EU, but the Swiss have real data on the ROI of multilingualism, and their university professors have been busy analyzing it. To hear what they've found out so far, you can listen to The Economic Value of Multilingualism: Private, Social, and Macroeconomic Perspectives, an extremely interesting presentation by Dr. François Grin from the University of Geneva here.