The HCIN working group, composed of seven Agencies with varying levels of resources and different approaches to multilingualism, and chaired by the Translation Centre, had been tasked with following up on the European Ombudsman recommendation formulated during the workshop on multilingualism organised by the Centre in September 2021, namely to try to harmonise approaches to multilingualism across the Agencies and to develop a proposal for a multilingual policy template that all Agencies would be able to endorse.
The outcome of the group’s work, the Guidelines and template for EU Agencies’ multilingual policies, places special emphasis on the potential of new language technologies and on how to achieve a multilingual website combining traditional human translation with machine translation.
Ms Horváth discussed with the Heads of Agencies how the ideas and recommendations presented in the document could best be implemented in the Agencies’ approaches to multilingualism, and she encouraged everyone to draft/adapt their language policy according to the template proposed in the annex to the Guidelines. She finished by assuring her counterparts of the Centre’s continuous support in all matters relating to multilingualism.
The Guidelines have been published on the landing page of the EU Agencies’ extranet, and have also been shared with the European Ombudsman, who welcomed the efforts made by the Network.