WRITTEN QUESTION No. 1983/97 by Kirsi PIHA to the Commission. Documents translated into Finnish
Date: 1997-06-09
Institutions: European Parliament, PIHA
Subjects: EU office or agency, EU publication, European Commission, Finland, consultancy, enlargement of the Union, services company, subcontracting, translation

C 60/74

EN

Official Journal of the European Communities

25. 2. 98

(98/C 60/108)

WRITTEN QUESTION E-1980/97

by Peter Skinner (PSE) to the Commission

(9 June 1997)

Subject: Heavy Goods Vehicles › fiscal regimes and movement controls

What action is the Commission taking to coordinate and harmonize HGV fiscal regimes and movement controls
to ensure fair competition, and complete the single market in this sector?

Answer given by Mr Kinnock on behalf of the Commission

(31 July 1997)

In July 1996 the Commission adopted a proposal for a Council directive on the charging of heavy goods vehicles
for the use of certain infrastructures (1) intended to replace Directive 93/89/EEC (2), which regulates road fiscal
matters in the Community.

The  Commission  proposal  is  currently  under  examination  in  the  Council  and  the  Parliament  which  gave  the
proposal a first reading in July 1997.

Regarding movement controls, the Honourable Member is referred to the Commission(cid:146)s reply to written question
E-41/97 by Mr Cornelissen (3).

(1)  OJ C 59, 26.2.1997.
(2)  OJ L 279, 12.11.1993.
(3)  OJ C 186, 18.6.1997.

(98/C 60/109)

WRITTEN QUESTION E-1983/97

by Kirsi Piha (PPE) to the Commission

(9 June 1997)

Subject: Documents translated into Finnish

In the past few days there has been negative publicity in Finland about the uneven level of Finnish translation of
Commission documents. Some of them have contained particularly bad grammatical errors and their texts have
been hard to understand or even completely unintelligible.

In the press reference has been made in this connection to the brochure on competition in urban and regional
planning issued by the Commission(cid:146)s regional policy division, which is a glaring example of bad translation.
However, according to expert opinion, this brochure was not translated by a Finnish native speaker and it may
even have been translated by machine.

In  order  to  avoid  this  type  of  scrutiny,  does  the  Commission  intend  to  issue  internal  instructions  to  all  its
departments and units using translation services to the effect that they must make use in their translations only of
professional translators selected for this task by means of competitions, and must also ensure that a person who
receives a document for translation speaks the language into which he is translating as his mother tongue? Will
the  Commission  also  ensure  that  there  are  enough  Finnish  language  translators  to  translate  all  the  necessary
documents properly?

Answer given by Mr Liikanen on behalf of the Commission

(11 July 1997)

A brochure mistakenly understood by some to be a European institution publication triggered the recent debate
on  the  quality  of  Finnish  translations  of  Community  documents.  Such  was  not  the  case.  The  document  in
question, presented by the daily Helsingin Sanomat in its editions of 20 May 1997, related to the competition for
the  Urban  Planning  Award,  which  is  organised  by  the  European  Council  of  Town  Planning,  a  body  totally
independent  of  the  Commission  and  any  other  European  institution.  Although  the  organisers  received  a
Commission grant, neither the brochure nor its translation was published or financed by the Commission or by
any other institution.