Professional EU translation
In July 2011, a group of EU representatives met in Belgrade at a gathering facilitated by the Belgrade University Faculty of Philology to discuss Serbia’s future increased need for professional translators and interpreters. The need will arise as Serbia embarks on the process of EU integration and in particular as work begins on the translation of the 200,000 pages of the EU’s Acquis Communautaire – the entire body of European Union law – from English to Serbian. This project has already begun and the obligation taken on to translate at least 35,000 pages by the end of 2011.
The Belgrade gathering was held in order to promote the Reforming Foreign Language Studies in Serbia project, part of the EU’s Tempus higher education reform program for EU partner countries. The ultimate aim of the project is comprehensive reform of language studies curricula at Serbia’s universities and in particular the introduction of master’s-level studies throughout, in order to significantly increase the number of professionally-trained translators and interpreters in the workforce.
Odista is not currently involved in the translation of the EU accession documents for a number of reasons – in the first instance we do not as a rule take on legal translations. It simply is not our field of expertise, nor do we plan to offer legal translation in the near future. Legal translation between Serbian and English has a whole range of challenges attached, concerning the significant differences that exist between the British and American legal systems and the Serbian (continental) system, and is not a task to be tackled lightly. Extensive legal knowledge is required which, in combination with the exceptional language skills we insist on, is not something many translators can offer. Another reason we are not involved in the Serbian translation of the EU documents is that the public tenders launched to procure translation services tend to include requirements that we simply cannot meet. For example, they usually insist on a company with a certain number of in-house translators, a certain minimum throughput (usually very high) and of course price is a critical factor in the decision-making process too. Odista is a small company and our overriding aim is to provide the highest quality of translation possible. We simply do not claim to be the fastest or the cheapest, and cannot compete on those terms. We will continue to focus primarily on translations that require word-perfect, idiomatic translation, such as websites, brochures and other marketing materials.
We will leave the EU translation to the “big guns”, but we certainly expect to be involved in the process of EU integration in other, indirect ways, such as providing English-Serbian and Serbian-English translation services to companies and organisations entering the Serbian market in the coming years. We also certainly welcome the reform of language studies in Serbia – it is desperately needed and can only be good for the translation industry of which we are a part.
Sources: Tanjug
