Formalizing the Primacy of English

Abstract

The first step in evaluating and proposing an alternative to current EU Translation is determining which language version is and should be the original text and thus the “source text” for translation into the other language versions. Notwithstanding the rules and rhetoric of EU’s Institutional Multilingualism, English is in reality the language that participants in the EU legislative process use primarily to draft and debate EU legislation. Analogously, the Court of Justice of the EU appears to give more weight to a small number of widely used languages when interpreting EU legislation, particularly the English language version. Europe’s cultural diversity and EU’s democratic legitimacy demand that EU Institutions acknowledge this reality and accept English as the institutional and pan-European lingua franca. Moreover, they ought to formally recognize the English language version as the original and sole authentic legislative text, and thus as the source text in EU Translation.