The Translation Centre for the Bodies of the European Union: Purpose and activities

Abstract

The Translation Centre for the Bodies of the European Union was established in 1994 to meet the translation needs of the other decentralized Community agencies. It also participates in the Interinstitutional Committee for Translation and Interpretation, which is working to promote collaboration between the services of the various European institutions and agencies and to achieve economies of scale in the translation field. In this paper, we describe the “raison d‟être” of this agency, which is governed by European public law, with legal personality, and which has its own financial resources constituted by the transfers from the European agencies, offices and institutions in exchange for services provided. We focus on its cooperation with 56 EU institutions and bodies located in 22 European countries, a cooperation which involves a number of linguistic activities in a wide spectrum of subject fields, ranging from drugs and medicines to maritime security or chemicals, education, railways, food safety and intellectual property (through its translation of Community trademarks and designs for its biggest client, the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market). We also discuss the terminological activities carried out at the Translation Centre, focusing more specifically on the compilation of terminological glossaries for the Centre‟s clients, as well as on the IATE interinstitutional terminological database.