Editing European Parliament (section)

===Translation and interpretation===
{{Multiple image
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| header            = Interpretation in the European Parliament
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| image1            = 2007 07 16 parlament europejski bruksela 47.JPG
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| caption1          = Interpreting booths in the hemicycle simultaneously interpret debates between 24 languages.
| image2            = Hearing of Commissioner-designate Thierry Breton (49068586441).jpg
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| caption2          = Interpreter at a committee hearing for the confirmation of [[Thierry Breton]] to the European Commission in 2019
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{{See also|Languages of the European Union}}

Speakers in the European Parliament are entitled to speak in any of the 24 official [[languages of the European Union]], ranging from French and German to [[Maltese language|Maltese]] and [[Irish language|Irish]]. Simultaneous interpreting is offered in all plenary sessions, and all final texts of legislation are translated. With twenty-four languages, the European Parliament is the most multilingual parliament in the world<ref>{{cite web|title=Press Release: Irish language arrives in European Parliament|date=11 January 2007|publisher=European Parliament Irish Office|url=http://www.europarl.ie/news_press_release_2_2007.html |access-date=12 June 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070928103833/http://www.europarl.ie/news_press_release_2_2007.html| archive-date=28 September 2007}}</ref> and the biggest employer of interpreters in the world (employing 350 full-time and 400 freelancers when there is higher demand).<ref name="Interpreters">{{cite web|title=The European Parliament's Interpreters.|date=12 April 2006|publisher=European Parliament|url=http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?language=EN&type=IM-PRESS&reference=20060403FCS06935&secondRef=0|access-date=21 June 2007}}</ref> Citizens may also address the Parliament in [[Basque language|Basque]], [[Catalan language|Catalan]]/[[Valencian language|Valencian]] and [[Galician language|Galician]].<ref>{{cite web|title=The European Parliament allows the written communication of citizens in Basque, Catalan and Galician. |year=2006 |publisher=Ciemen |url=http://www.ciemen.org/mercator/notidetail.cfm?IDA=897&lg=gb |access-date=21 June 2007 |url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070927003800/http://www.ciemen.org/mercator/notidetail.cfm?IDA=897&lg=gb |archive-date=27 September 2007 }}</ref>

Usually a language is translated from a foreign tongue into a translator's native tongue. Due to the large number of languages, some being minor ones, since 1995 interpreting is sometimes done the opposite way, out of an interpreter's native tongue (the "retour" system). In addition, a speech in a minor language may be interpreted through a third language for lack of interpreters ("relay" interpreting){{snd}} for example, when interpreting out of [[Estonian language|Estonian]] into Maltese.<ref name="Interpreters"/> Due to the complexity of the issues, interpretation is not word for word. Instead, interpreters have to convey the political meaning of a speech, regardless of their own views. This requires detailed understanding of the politics and terms of the Parliament, involving a great deal of preparation beforehand (e.g. reading the documents in question). Difficulty can often arise when MEPs use profanities, jokes and word play or speak too fast.<ref name="Interpreters"/>

While some see speaking their native language as an important part of their identity, and can speak more fluently in debates, interpretation and its cost has been criticised by some. A 2006 report by [[Alexander Stubb]] MEP highlighted that by only using English, French and German costs could be reduced from [[Euro|€]]118,000 per day (for 21 languages then{{snd}} [[Romanian language|Romanian]], [[Bulgarian language|Bulgarian]] and [[Croatian language|Croatian]] having not yet been included) to €8,900 per day.<ref>{{cite news|title=In European Parliament, debate – in 21 languages – can be pricey|date=12 September 2006|url=https://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0912/p05s01-woeu.html|newspaper=The Christian Science Monitor|access-date=12 June 2007 }}</ref> There has also been a small-scale campaign to make French the reference language for all legal texts, on the basis of an argument that it is more clear and precise for legal purposes.<ref>{{cite web|title=Campaign to make French sole legal language in EU|date=7 February 2007|work=International Herald Tribune |url=http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/02/07/europe/EU-GEN-EU-French.php|access-date=12 June 2007 }}</ref>

Because the proceedings are translated into all of the official EU languages, they have been used to make a multilingual [[Text corpus|corpus]] known as [[Europarl corpus|Europarl]]. It is widely used to train [[statistical machine translation]] systems.<ref>Philipp Koehn (2005) Europarl: [http://www.iccs.inf.ed.ac.uk/~pkoehn/publications/europarl-mtsummit05.pdf A Parallel Corpus for Statistical Machine Translation] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100705060514/http://www.iccs.inf.ed.ac.uk/~pkoehn/publications/europarl-mtsummit05.pdf |date=5 July 2010 }}, in ''MT Summit 2005''</ref>