Meeting EMSA, the EMCDDA, the EUAA and the JUs
November has been a month of important client visits for the Translation Centre’s Director, Ildikó Horváth. The start was made on 10 and 11 November with a visit to the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) and the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) in Lisbon. The next visit was on 22 November to the European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA) in Malta. The month ended with the Centre’s Director meeting seven Joint Undertakings (JUs) in Brussels on 30 November. The main objectives of these meetings were both to review ongoing cooperation and understand these clients’ future needs and expectations.
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EMSA: Ms Horváth, accompanied by the Centre’s Head of Translation Department, met Executive Director Maja Markovčić Kostelac and the managers of Corporate Services, Communications and the Executive Office.

Ms Markovčić Kostelac presented EMSA’s wide-ranging portfolio which has positioned the Agency as a reference in the maritime sector not only in the EU but also worldwide. She stressed the importance of digitalisation and AI in the maritime domain to ensure a quicker response to maritime security issues.

EMSA intends to step up communication with its stakeholders and the general public, and multilingualism plays an important role in this. In particular, the Agency plans to increase the volume of web content and social media translation in all the official languages of the EU.

Discussions therefore focused on the possibilities offered by the Centre’s range of services as well as on quality assurance aspects.

EMCDDA: The Centre’s Director and Head of Translation Department were welcomed by Director Alexis Goosdeel and key staff from the Communications unit.

Mr Goosdeel gave an extensive presentation on the future new tasks for the EMCDDA after the recast of the Agency’s founding regulation. This is due to enter into force in 2024 and will ensure that the EMCDDA can better respond to new challenges in the field of drugs, provide more support to Member States and contribute to cooperation at international level.

The EMCDDA intends to work closely with the Centre on innovative initiatives to develop its multilingual approach. These include: machine translation with or without light post editing involving the network of National Focal Points (NFPs) in the quality assurance process; AI-based summarisation of texts with a view to their subsequent translation; and web translation combining human translation (using an automated translation management tool and associated workflow) with machine translation. Furthermore, in order to make domain-specific terminology accessible to its networks and the general public, the Agency plans to link its extensive terminology resources available in IATE to a dedicated page on its website.

EUAA: Ms Horváth, accompanied by the Heads of Workflow Management and Advanced Language Solutions at the Centre, met Executive Director Nina Gregori and managers of key operational units and Communications.

Ms Gregori presented EUAA’s mandate and development plans for the future, and she highlighted the importance the Agency attaches to translation and quality in the framework of its mission. As one example of this, accurate and confidential translations will be very important for the future training academy.

Ms Horváth acknowledged the EUAA’s multilingual communication efforts, which include numerous translations into non-EU languages, and she emphasised the role of language technologies in the services offered by the Centre and particularly for the processing of those services.
Both parties agreed to strengthen their cooperation in the areas of custom machine translation, quality assurance via a specific workflow involving the agency’s translation reviewers, and terminology management. Other promising projects for cooperation will be source text editing for the Agency’s training modules, including testing of the material from a functional point of view and subsequent semi-automated submission and integration of translations of the modules into the EUAA’s systems, plus a new translation and layout workflow for complex publications.

JUs: Ms Horváth took the opportunity of the annual discharge exercise organised by the European Parliament to meet Executive Directors and staff from seven Joint Undertakings at their premises in Brussels.

The Centre has been cooperating with the JUs since the early years of 2000. Under Horizon Europe (the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation 2021 2027), a new single JU Council Regulation entered into force at the end of 2021. This repealed the previous individual JU regulations and set up 9 JUs as Union bodies for a period ending on 31 December 2031.

Ms Hórvath’s visit was therefore a means of identifying the JUs’ challenges and future needs with regard to multilingualism and seeing how the extensive range of CdT services could best help them meet their communication objectives.

The meeting participants agreed that in 2023, they would, together, further explore web translation and AI-based services, such as transcription, subtitling and machine translation.

Image created based on pictures provided by: EMSA, CdT, EUAA and JUs