Translation is an intercultural activity that the EU must embrace if it continues to hold “United in diversity” as its motto.  Ernst-August Gutt observes the use of translation “across boundaries”. [1] As a body dedicated to being “United in diversity”, the EU should practice translation in order to affect this intercultural activity. The linguist Laurence Venuti observes this: “Translation is the ‘trial of the foreign’. But in a double sense. In the first place, it establishes a relationship between the Self-Same (propre) and the foreign by aiming to open up the foreign work to us in its utter foreignness …And this trial, often an exile, can also exhibit the most singular power of the translating act: to reveal the foreign work’s most original kernel, its most deeply-buried, most self-same…most distant”. [2]  Governmental bodies such as the EU have to mediate and compromise when discussing issues and debating. Translation is simply another type of mediation. The linguist Laurence Venuti describes it as “a bilingual mediated process of communication”. [3] Translation in a political setting is therefore simply an extension of this political mediation strongly present in the European Union.  [1] Venuti, L. (ed) The Translation Studies Reader, 2000, p.378  [2] Ibid p.284  [3] Ibid p.161