Translation and Interpretation in Focus - International Conference in Vilnius

An international conference entitled Translation and Interpretation in Europe is to be held in Vilnius on 27-28 September at the Lithuanian Language Institute. The conference is co-organized by the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, the State Commission for the Lithuanian Language and the European Federation of National Institutions for Language (EFNIL).

All the member states of the European Union have institutions whose role includes the monitoring of official language or languages of their country, advising on language use, or developing language policy. The European Federation of National Institutions for Language (EFNIL: www.efnil.org ) provides a forum for these institutions to exchange information about their work and to gather and publish information about language use and language policy within the European Union. EFNIL was established in Stockholm on 14 October 2003 and has 37 member institutions from 30 different countries all over Europe.

The Federation holds its annual conference and General Assembly each autumn. The conference is a thematic meeting, in which the delegates discuss one or more major topics concerning language planning and policy with invited internationally respected keynote speakers.

This year in Vilnius, the eleventh EFNIL conference is special not just because of its thematic topics (translation and interpretation), but because of the fact that in the second half of 2013 Lithuania holds the Presidency of the EU. In relation to this the European Commission will hold a conference under the umbrella of the European Day of Languages on 25-26 September, immediately preceding the EFNIL conference. The EU conference is entitled  “Unity in diversity: languages for mobility, jobs and active citizenship”.

Since its foundation in its earliest political form in 1956, the European Union has thought of itself as multilingual. The ruling made by the first six member states, that their national languages should all be official languages of the community, holds good now for the present twenty-seven member countries of the Union with their twenty-three official languages. As no one can master so many languages, the bodies of the EU maintain extensive interpretation and translation services in order to secure communication between their officials and the representatives of the various member states.

EFNIL, the network of the central language institutions of all states of the European Union and several other European countries, promotes the preservation and further development of European linguistic diversity as a basis of the cultural and social diversity of the continent. Since translation and interpretation are a means to overcome the practical linguistic barriers of multilingualism and also to preserve the linguistic diversity of Europe, EFNIL is extremely interested in these two cultural practices. Therefore representatives of the European Commission and the European Parliament and several other experts were invited to report on the tasks, practices and experiences of their interpretation and translation services, to discuss major issues or to give overview reports with regard to the general theme of the conference. A panel discussion forum will also be organised with the title of “The importance of translation and interpretation for the national language(s) in Europe”.