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EITI reports rise in demand for ‘new’ EU languages

Fifteen months after the enlargement of the European Union, the interpreting and translation company EITI has reported a marked increase in demand for the ‘new’ EU languages.

Ten countries joined the EU on 1st May 2004 as part of the largest expansion in the organisation’s history. The population of the EU grew from 380 million to 455 million, and the number of ‘official languages’ rose from 11 to 20. In terms of the number of speakers, the five biggest ‘new’ EU languages are Polish, Hungarian, Czech, Slovak and Lithuanian.

EITI, which supplies interpreting and translation services to public authorities and businesses across Britain, publishes a monthly report that tracks changes in demand for different languages. It has found that, over the past fifteen months, the new EU languages have moved steadily up its list of ‘most requested’ languages.

“In May 2004, only one of the new EU languages was ranked among our top 20 languages,” says Dawn Bowes, EITI’s operations manager. “That was Polish, and it was ranked 15th. In July 2005, however, there were four new EU languages in our top 20, and two in our top 10: Polish was ranked 6th, Lithuanian 10th, Slovak 17th and Czech 19th.”

The month-by-month rankings for these four languages is shown in the chart below.

“The major exception to the trend we’re seeing is Hungarian, which doesn’t feature at all in our top 30,” says Dawn. “Of course, the data we have only relates to our own customers. But we work with a wide range of organisations based right across Britain, so it does suggest this might be related to a national trend. Certainly, as far as we’re concerned, we’re stepping up our recruitment programme for linguists specializing in these languages.”

Notes

1) EITI publishes a monthly top 10 on its web site ( click here for more information). 12-month and 6-month summaries are published in EITI’s annual and half-year reports.

2) EITI’s top 10 is based on the number of requests per language received from public service providers based in the UK. These include public authorities, charities and private sector organisations.