Translation in figures 2020

We are the translation service

of the European Commission.

We provide high-quality translation

and other language services.

This helps the Commission communicate

with citizens in a language they understand,
making the EU more open and democratic.
 Translators, language technology experts,
Our staff quality experts, terminologists and revisers
(approx. data as of 1 January 2020)
70%

Total staff Support staff*

2,000 30%

* Management, assistants, IT, HR and finance, outsourcing, training, communication etc.

 Women Men

68% 32%

Where we work:
1% locally in EU member countries.

46% 53%
of us work in Brussels in Luxembourg
What we translate:

Others

49% 1%
EU law-making 8%
Communication with
EU institutions,
national parliaments

10%
Other 21%
official External
documents 9% communication,
Incoming web content
correspondence*

2%
* Every EU citizen can write to the Consulting
EU institutions in one of the the public
official languages and receive an on EU policy
answer in the same language.
 We translate
approx. 2 million pages
a year

In-house: Outsourced:
68% 32%

Translation costs

Total cost/year €343 million

(including staff, outsourcing, IT,
training, events, 24/7 availability)

Proportion of EU budget 0.2 %

When they became an official EU language
1973 1986

1981
English Portuguese

Greek
1958
1995
Danish Spanish Finnish
Dutch

French Swedish

German Italian Slovenian

Romanian
Slovak
Croatian

Irish Polish

2013
2007 Maltese
Bulgarian
Lithuanian

2004
Estonian Czech Hungarian Latvian
We translate all official EU languages
Pages from Pages into
1,689,756 English 185,613
73,134 French 140,384
29,201 German 104,757
23,448 Italian 84,389
22,358 Spanish 83,832
17,469 Romanian 76,726
13,703 Polish 77,881
12,372 Hungarian 75,587
11,968 Bulgarian 76,240
11,125 Greek 76,960
9,810 Portuguese 77,591
7,911 Dutch 82,492
6,523 Czech 75,444
6,475 Croatian 74,877
5,913 Slovak 74,341
5,547 Slovenian 74,113
4,694 Danish 73,492
4,614 Swedish 75,327
4,489 Finnish 73,911
4,478 Lithuanian 74,558
4,464 Latvian 73,409
4,124 Estonian 73,425
2,727 Others 6,573
661 Maltese 73,192
0 Irish 11,849
TOTAL 1,976,964
 Print: HC-03-20-209-EN-C ¦ ISBN 978-92-76-17573-5 ¦ doi:10.2782/359611
PDF: HC-03-20-209-EN-N ¦ ISBN 978-92-76-17574-2 ¦ doi:10.2782/019253
ec.europa.eu/info/departments/translation
DG Translation local offices:
ec.europa.eu/info/departments/translation/dg-translation-local-offices
Work with DG Translation:
ec.europa.eu/info/jobs-european-commission

@TranslatingForEurope

@Translatores

DGTranslation

TranslatingForEurope

European Commission
B-1049 Brussels
Tel. +32 2 2991111
DGT-COMMUNICATION@ec.europa.eu

© European Union, 2020

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