Within the framework of sustained cooperation and close inter-agency exchanges, in March 2023, the Translation Centre’s Director, Ildikó Horváth, accompanied by the Head of the Translation Support Department and the Head of Workflow Management, met the Executive Director of the European Medicines Agency, Emer Cooke, and the operational teams in charge of the EMA's communication policies and innovation, to discuss the way forward in the cooperation between the two agencies.
Discussions started by taking stock of the pandemic years, when planning the work and responding in a timely manner were of particular importance. Those times were challenging, but the persistent efforts and personal investment of both teams paid off.
Providing multilingual content in the medical field to a wider public was another key topic on the agenda. Thanks to the use of Translation Centre’s advanced language technologies, the European Medicines Agency has been able to meet this objective and is proud of being a forerunner in the use of Centre’s Web translation module.
Later in the meeting, the EMA colleagues presented their project on an innovative XML-based authoring tool, which would contribute to easier multilingual communication and pave the way to disseminating this good practice in content authoring.
In April, Ildikó Horváth also met with Eurofound’s Executive Director, Ivailo Kalfin. The two agencies have had a long-standing and fruitful cooperation and, with the advent of advanced communication technologies, share an interest in expanding Eurofound’s multilingual portfolio.
Eurofound’s interest in the DIGITAL FIRST approach for the agency’s publications and communications was at the top of the agenda. The Centre’s expertise in this area is key to be able to develop such an initiative. The web translation module, a tool that has been developed by the Centre and is constantly updated to keep pace with the latest technological developments, can be used to achieve multilingual communication in a digital format, not only by Eurofound, but also by many other EU agencies.