2014, Highlights of the year.
Date: 2015-06-05
Institutions: Translation Centre
Subjects: Translation Centre for the Bodies of the European Union, customers, interinstitutional cooperation (EU), multilingualism

2014
HIGHLIGHTS
OF THE YEAR

TRANSLATION CENTRE
FOR THE BODIES OF THE EUROPEAN UNION

20 YEARS COMMITTED TO MULTILINGUALISM

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR

CONTENTS

2014

FOREWORD ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 4

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 
YEAR

PART I.  THE TRANSLATION CENTRE – KEY FIGURES 2014 AT A GLANCE ............................................................................................................................................................. 5
Translation/Revision ............................................................................................................................................................................................................... 5
Documents.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 5
Community trade marks (CTMs)............................................................................................................................................................................................. 5

Other language services ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 5
Terminology ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 5
Term lists................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 5
Editing ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 6
Video subtitling: a new service as of 2015 .............................................................................................................................................................................. 6

PART II.  CLIENTS – THE TRANSLATION CENTRE’S RAISON D’ÊTRE ...................................................................................................................................................................... 7

New client agreements and potential future clients ........................................................................................................................................................................................ 7

Report on what the Centre did for its clients .................................................................................................................................................................................................. 7
Meetings and special projects ............................................................................................................................................................................................................... 8
Regular cooperation with the other clients .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 18
The Agencies’ budget publications ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 18
The Agencies replies to observations from the Court of Auditors (ECA) .............................................................................................................................. 18
Terminology work ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 18
First Translation Contact Network meeting ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 19

Translation Quality Assurance ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 20
Status of implementation of the Translation Quality Assurance Action Plan (TQAAP) ......................................................................................................... 20
Handling client feedback: CSF statistics and outcome of the CSF brainstorming workshop ............................................................................................... 22

Surveys ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 24
Status of implementation of the action plan 2014-2015 resulting from the Client Satisfaction Survey 2013 ........................................................................ 24
Follow-up survey to Client Satisfaction Survey 2013............................................................................................................................................................ 24
Client survey on Business Continuity needs......................................................................................................................................................................... 25
Survey on the EU agencies’ approaches to multilingualism ................................................................................................................................................. 25

Workﬂ ow optimisation and innovation .......................................................................................................................................................................................................... 26
Client Portal .......................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 26
Designing a new Translation Workﬂ ow Management System (e-CdT)  ............................................................................................................................... 26
New CAT tool ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 27

PART III.  THE TRANSLATION CENTRE’S SECOND MISSION: INTERINSTITUTIONAL COOPERATION  .............................................................................................................. 29
Inter-Active Terminology for Europe (IATE) .......................................................................................................................................................................... 29
Interinstitutional Terminology Portal – EUR-Term ................................................................................................................................................................. 30
Terminology Away-Day ......................................................................................................................................................................................................... 30
Interinstitutional meetings of terminologists .......................................................................................................................................................................... 30
Machine translation............................................................................................................................................................................................................... 31
Technology Watch as a tool for innovation ........................................................................................................................................................................... 31
Interinstitutional exchange programme................................................................................................................................................................................. 31
Europe Day ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 32
IAMLADP .............................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 32
JIAMCATT ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 32

PART IV.  OTHER EXTERNAL OUTREACH ACTIVITIES ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 33
Conference for contractors ................................................................................................................................................................................................... 33
Conference on legal translation at the Translation Centre of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Armenia and 
study visit of the Armenian Translation Centre ..................................................................................................................................................................... 33
EU Agencies’ exhibition at the European Parliament ........................................................................................................................................................... 33
Contact with Member State universities ............................................................................................................................................................................... 34
Trainees at the Centre .......................................................................................................................................................................................................... 35

PART V.  EXTERNAL COMMUNICATION ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 37
Statistics on the use of the Centre’s public website .............................................................................................................................................................. 37
The Centre on Facebook ...................................................................................................................................................................................................... 37
New strategy 2016-2018: Moving forward  ........................................................................................................................................................................... 37
The Translation Centre – a practical guide for clients .......................................................................................................................................................... 37
The language hub – the Centre’s client newsletter – Fourth edition ..................................................................................................................................... 37
Terminology leaﬂ et ................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 38
Communication Framework  ................................................................................................................................................................................................. 38

 ANNEXES ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 39

The Translation Centre’s organisation chart ................................................................................................................................................................................................. 39

Total volume: 758 061  pages ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 40

Volume per client (in pages) ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 40

Volume vs forecast (in pages) ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 41

Human and ﬁ nancial resources 2014 (forecast vs actual) ........................................................................................................................................................................... 41
Key ﬁ gures 2014 per client ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 42

2014 - Highlights of the year

This publication of the Translation Centre for the Bodies of the European Union is available on its website: cdt.europa.eu

Further information on the European Union is accessible via the Europa server (europa.eu).

© Translation Centre for the Bodies of the European Union, 2015. All rights reserved.

ISBN 978-92-95074-17-0

ISSN 2363-0221

doi: 10.2817/042975

2014

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR 2014

2014

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR

FOREWORD

Dear Reader,

This year is a very special time for me to present our report on ‘Highlights of the year’: 2015 
marks the 20th anniversary of the Translation Centre. I have seen the Centre grow from its very 
beginning, and when I look at this organisation as it stands today, I feel truly proud of what we 
have achieved.

As shown by this report, the Centre is well-anchored within the family of EU agencies, with the 
clear mission to cater for their diverse multilingual communication needs. It thereby contributes 
essentially to bringing the various ﬁ elds in which the agencies operate closer to the European 
citizen.

Furthermore,  the  Centre  plays  an  active  role  in  interinstitutional  cooperation  by  interacting 
closely with the other translation services of the EU institutions on various projects aimed at 
streamlining working methods, ﬁ nding innovative solutions to common issues and increasing 
efﬁ ciency, thus achieving global economies for the EU.

In  addition,  through  its  external  outreach  activities,  the  Centre  shares  its  knowledge  and 
benchmarks its way of working with other EU and international organisations, language service 
providers, professional associations, the academic world and national experts.

Looking back, the Centre started small in 1995 as a pioneer with seven clients, without a clear 
idea of the workload to be expected and whether the project of a dedicated agency specialised 
in  translation  would  be  a  winner.  It  has  gradually  organised  its  services  and  administrative 
procedures  and  strengthened  its  operational  capacity  to  respond  to  its  increased  number  of 
clients (60 in 2015) and work volumes. By way of comparison, the number of pages translated 
has  risen  from  20  000  in  1995  to  758  061  in  2014.  Personally,  as  Head  of  the  Translation 
Department for many years and devoted to my profession, I can assure you that we have always 
endeavoured  to  achieve  the  best  possible  quality  to  our  clients’  satisfaction  and  that  we  will 
continue to do so.

In terms of stafﬁ ng, there have been two milestones in the Centre’s history: one in 1998 due to 
the boom in trade mark translations and another in 2004 relating to the big-bang enlargement of 
the EU to 10 new Member States. I feel this is the right moment and place to sincerely thank my 
colleagues for their dedication, expertise and enthusiasm, which were instrumental in making 
the Centre a success. An equal thank you goes to the many external contractors without whom 
the Centre would not be able to produce the amount of pages requested by its clients in such 
a wide range of specialised domains, large number of language combinations, and within the 
agreed time frames. 

One  event  last  year  was  particularly  dear  to  me,  namely  the  signing  of  the  Centre’s  seat 
agreement with the Luxembourg authorities, which formalised the Centre’s standing among the 
EU organisations established in our host country.

Let me conclude by saying that I am very grateful to have been part of these 20 years of exciting 
adventure. I am convinced that the coming years will be at least equally challenging and that my 
colleagues will do all they can to continue contributing to this success story.

Marie-Anne Fernández, Acting Director

4

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 
YEAR

PART I.    
PART I.    

THE TRANSLATION CENTRE – KEY FIGURES 2014 AT A GLANCE
THE TRANSLATION CENTRE – KEY FIGURES 2014 AT A GLANCE

TRANSLATION/REVISION
In 2014, the Centre recorded a total of 758 061 
pages in terms of translation volume, i.e. 5.8% 
less than the previous year. This volume was 
nevertheless  11.1%  higher  than  the  target  of 
682 342 pages set in the work programme for 
2014.

DOCUMENTS
The number of pages for documents amounted 
to  276  827  –  a  6.3%  decrease  on  2013, 
translated/edited 
although 
documents  increased  in  2014.  Clients  seem 

the  number  of 

to  tend  towards  producing  more,  but  shorter 
documents.

Since meeting the clients’ deadlines is one of 
the Centre’s key priorities, 99.3% of documents 
were delivered in a timely manner.

When  placing  orders,  the  Centre’s  clients 
can  choose  between  ﬁ ve  types  of  deadline. 
Around 56.5% of document translations had a 
normal deadline, while 17.2% were scheduled, 
13.5% were urgent and 12.2% were ‘slow’. The 
demand for ‘very urgent’ translations remained 
low, at 0.6% of the total translation volume.

Total: 758 061
Community trade marks: 481 234 (63.5%)

Documents: 276 827 (36.5%)

%
5
.
6
5

%
9
.
6
4

2013

2014

%
9
.
4
2

%
2
.
7
1

%
0
.
6
1

%
5
.
3
1

%
0
.
2
1

%
2
.
2
1

%
2
.
0

%
6
.
0

5
9
9
1

6
9
9
1

7
9
9
1

8
9
9
1

9
9
9
1

0
0
0
2

1
0
0
2

2
0
0
2

3
0
0
2

4
0
0
2

5
0
0
2

6
0
0
2

7
0
0
2

8
0
0
2

9
0
0
2

0
1
0
2

1
1
0
2

2
1
0
2

3
1
0
2

4
1
0
2

Normal

Scheduled

Urgent

Slow

Very urgent

  Volume evolution 1995-2014

  Type of deadlines

99.2%

99.3%

565312

433885 435981

509798

481234

98.8%

98.5%

98.3%

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

  Deadline compliance

COMMUNITY TRADE MARKS (CTMS)
The  Centre  translated  481  234  pages  of 
Community trade marks (CTMs) for the Ofﬁ ce 
for  Harmonization 
Internal  Market 
in 
(OHIM), which represented 63.5% of the total 
volume.

the 

The  initial  budget  estimates  foresaw  around 
400  000  pages.  However,  in  June,  the  OHIM 
reviewed  its  estimates  and  the  volume  of 
translated  trade  marks  was  ﬁ nally  1%  higher 
than the ﬁ gures in the second amending budget 
(475 279 pages).

2010

2013
  Volumes of Community trademarks

2012

2011

2014

Other language services

TERMINOLOGY
In  total,  six  glossaries  were  completed  in 
various  specialisation  ﬁ elds 
for  EIOPA, 
EMCDDA, EDPS, Eurojust and ECHA. 

The Centre provided support and advice to four 
clients: EEA, EU-OSHA, EFSA and EIB.

Other  projects  were  initiated  in  2014  for 
ECB,  EDPS,  EMA  and  EMCDDA  and  will  be 
continued in 20151. 

1 For further details, see section ‘Terminology Work’ on pages 
18 and 19.

the 

TERM LISTS
Nineteen  clients  requested 
translation 
of  term  lists  in  2014.  In  total,  250  692  ‘term 
list’  entries  were  delivered  during  the  year, 
of  which  195  149  were  for  OHIM  (157  944 
for  miscellaneous  purposes,  mainly  website 
labels; 18 609 for Community designs; 18 524 
for TMclass; and 72 for the agency’s website). 
Of the remaining entries delivered, 42 367 were 
labels  for  the  DG-EMPL  website  and  13  176 
were for the 17 other clients who requested this 
service.

5

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR

2014

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR 2014

2014

clients 

requested 

EDITING
Thirteen 
editing 
services in 2014. The Centre edited a total 
of  21  653  pages,  of  which  16  989  were 
opposition decisions for OHIM and 3 050 
were  for  EBA. As  in  the  past  years,  the 
documents were in English in the majority 
of  cases.  The  other  most  requested 
languages were German, French, Italian, 
Spanish  and  some  non-EU  languages 
such as Russian and Arabic.

VIDEO SUBTITLING: A NEW SERVICE AS 
OF 2015
With  the  advent  of  social  media,  the 
EU  agencies  are  increasingly  publishing 
videos  online  and  need  to  have  them 

subtitled  to  ensure  efﬁ cient  multilingual 
communication.  This  was  reﬂ ected  in  a 
survey carried out in 2013 by the Centre, 
which  had  shown  that  several  clients 
would be interested in using the Centre’s 
services to subtitle their videos. 

A pilot project was launched with OHIM in 
2014. A  subtitling  software  package  was 
purchased by the Centre, and the various 
aspects of the deﬁ nition of this new service 
were speciﬁ ed in the course of the year. 

In October 2014, the Centre’s Management 
Board  approved  adding  subtitling  to  the 
Centre’s portfolio of services as of 20152.  

2 For further details, see the summary on ‘OHIM’ on 
page 17.

The Centre serves its clients all over Europe

6

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 
YEAR

PART II.  

CLIENTS – THE TRANSLATION CENTRE’S RAISON D’ÊTRE

New client agreements and potential future clients

The Centre’s client portfolio fell from 60 clients at the end of 2013 to 59 in the middle of the 
year and then rose again to 60 at the end of 2014:

In June, the Centre signed an agreement with 
the  ECSEL  (Electronic  Components  and 
Systems  for  European  Leadership)  Joint 
Undertaking,  which  replaced  the  two  Joint 
Undertakings    ARTEMIS  JU  and  ENIAC  JU, 
both of which had been clients of the Centre. The 
main objectives of ECSEL JU are to take part in 
implementing Horizon 2020, the EU’s research 
and innovation framework programme, and to 
contribute to the development of a strong and 
globally  competitive  electronics  components 
and systems industry in the European Union3. 

In  December,  a  cooperation  agreement  was 
signed  with  the  Single  Resolution  Board 
(SRB), 
‘the  European  resolution  authority 
for  the  newly  created  Banking  Union  and  its 
”Single Resolution Mechanism”. Its mission is 
to ensure an orderly resolution of failing banks 
with minimal costs for taxpayers and to the real 
economy.’4  Both  ECSEL  JU  and  the  SRB  are 
based in Brussels.

Negotiations on an agreement were initiated with 
the Bio-Based Industries Joint Undertaking 

3 For further information, see http://ecsel.eu/web/index.php.

(BBI  JU),  tasked  with  the  mission  to  convert 
biological  residues  and  wastes  into  greener 
everyday products5. A third Joint Undertaking – 
Shift2Rail Joint Undertaking was established 
in June, and is a new public-private partnership 
in the rail sector6. Negotiations on a cooperation 
agreement will start in 2015.

Following  the  negotiations  with  DG  SANCO 
on  translation  services  to  be  provided  in  the 
framework  of  the  European  Online  Dispute 
Resolution (ODR) system, the Centre drafted a 
ﬁ rst agreement for 2015 to cater for preparatory 
measures and steps to be implemented before 
the  launch  of  the  platform  in  January  2016. 
As  certain  adjustments  concerning,  ﬁ rstly,  the 
nature  of  the  texts  and  the  overall  volume 
and, secondly, the scope of the preparation of 
language  resources  were  pending  input  from 
the Member States that would be expected in 
early 2015, the ﬁ nalisation and signature of the 
arrangement was postponed to that date7.

5 For further information, see http://bbi-europe.eu/.

6 For further information, see http://ec.europa.eu/research/press/
jti/factsheet_s2r-web.pdf.

4 For further information, see http://srb.europa.eu/.

7 For further information, see page 8.

OHIM

94604

Report on what the Centre did for its clients

EMA

31767

ECHA

27443

FRA

13872

EASO

11431

EASA

8885

ERA

7614

EBA

7365

EU-OSHA

6872

EC DG-EMPL

6226

  The top 10 clients
in terms of translation volumes in 2014

In line with previous years, the Centre continued meeting clients in order to raise awareness 
about its services and workﬂ ows, to discuss quality assurance matters, to learn about the 
clients’ organisational structures, missions and expectations and to follow up on speciﬁ c 
projects. Slightly over 25% of the clients were met. 

The ﬁ rst part of this chapter will focus on those 
clients  with  which  the  Centre  interacted  more 
intensely  in  2014.  The  second  part  of  this 
chapter  lists  all  clients  for  which  the  Centre 
continued  providing  language  services  on  a 
business-as-usual basis. Clients in this part will 
be  listed  according  to  whether  volumes  have 

increased, remained stable or decreased. For 
ease  of  reading  and  retrieval,  the  information 
on  client-speciﬁ c  terminology  projects  can  be 
found  under  the  heading  ‘Terminology  work’ 
following the second part. As in previous years, 
key  ﬁ gures  per  client  are  presented  in  the 
annex.

7

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR

2014

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR

2014

MEETINGS AND SPECIAL PROJECTS
(Clients are listed in alphabetical order.)

limited  number  of 

Cedefop
The European Centre for the Development 
of  Vocational  Training  (Cedefop)  sent 
translation 
a  very 
requests in the past year, relating to grant 
award  notices  and  tender  documents. 
However, the Centre received an order for 
some titles for their website. A project to 
translate the whole website in the coming 
year is in the pipeline, so the Centre looks 
forward  to  increased  requests  for  web 
content translation in 2015.

CJEU
While translation activities commissioned 
by the Directorate-General for Translation 
of  the  Court  of  Justice  of  the  European 
Union  (CJEU)  were  rather  limited  in 
2014, covering only a few calls for tender 
documents 
into  English 
from  French 
and  German,  the  Centre  followed  up  on 
a  successful  pilot  project  launched  at 
the  end  of  2013,  namely  the  conversion 
of  PDF  ﬁ les  into  an  editable  format. 
Throughout the year, the Centre converted 
11 464 pages of PDF documents with the 
speciﬁ c objective of enriching the content 
of  the  Court’s  translation  memories.  The 
sentences of the converted originals were 
subsequently  aligned  with  translations 
done  by  the  Court.  In  total,  the  Centre 
imported 13 149 pages of alignments into 
the Court’s Euramis translation memories.

Council
In 2014, the Centre continued to help the 
Council’s  translation  service  with  some 
translations  into  Croatian,  on  which  the 
Council  staff  provided  regular  feedback. 
Nevertheless, the bulk of work undertaken 
documents 
consisted 
resulting  from  the  EU’s  relations  with 
non-EU  member  state  countries  (e.g. 
agreements,  documents 
to 
relating 
from  non-
summits  or  partnerships) 
EU languages including Chinese, Korean, 
Japanese, 
Azerbaijanis, 
Georgian, 
Russian,  Arabic,  Farsi  and  Serbian  into 

revising 

in 

8

thus 
English  or  French.  The  Centre 
proved  to  be  a  reliable  partner  for  non-
EU language services.

CPVO
Translation volumes continued to increase 
for  the  Community  Plant  Variety  Ofﬁ ce 
(CPVO)  compared  with  previous  years. 
A total of 90 documents were translated, 
mainly from English into French, ranging 
from correspondence to legal documents 
relating 
to  appeal  proceedings  and 
decisions, and administrative documents, 
in  particular  referring 
the  Ofﬁ ce’s 
Administrative  Council  and  fees  system 
and  the  CPVO  R&D  Strategy  for  2015-
2020.

to 

EC DG EMPL
The European Commission’s Directorate-
General  for  Employment,  Social  Affairs 
and  Inclusion  (DG  EMPL)  continued  to 
develop  the  job  mobility  portal  EURES. 
A  new  revised  version  of  the  portal  was 
being  prepared  in  2014  and  the  Centre 
was  involved  in  translating  labels  and 
content for the new tool for employers and 
jobseekers. But English was not the only 
source language. There were also labour 
market  reviews  arriving  from  all  Member 
States  in  their  own  language,  which  had 
to be translated into English, French and 
German. 

In addition, DG EMPL continued to order 
translations  of  articles  for  the  EURES 
website  in  all  EU  languages,  as  well  as 
information  about  upcoming  events  (co-)
organised  by  EURES  and  advice  for 
jobseekers and employers.

EC DGT – DG SANCO
The  European  Commission’s  Directorate 
General  for  Health  &  Consumers  (DG 
SANCO)8 
and 

launched 

technical 

CJEU:
Throughout the year, the Centre con-
verted 11 464 pages of PDF documents 
with the speciﬁ c objective of enriching 
the content of the Court’s translation 
memories.

EC DG EMPL:
A new revised version of the job mobil-
ity portal EURES was being prepared 
in 2014 and the Centre was involved in 
translating labels and content for the new 
tool for employers and jobseekers.

organisational developments to implement 
a  European  Online  Dispute  Resolution 
(ODR)  system  to  allow  EU  consumers 
and  traders  to  submit  complaints  online 
and to settle e-commerce disputes without 
having  recourse  to  legal  proceedings. 
The  platform  is  scheduled  to  go  live  on 
1 January 2016.

The  Centre  studied  the  feasibility  of 
translating the ﬁ nal outcome of the ODR 
procedure  whenever  requested  in  the 
future  by  one  of  the  parties  involved  in 
the  process.  A  service  offer  based  on 
various  estimates  and  assumptions  of 
the  total  volumes  to  be  translated  and 
the reuse rates that could be achieved by 
using  translation  databases  was  drafted 
and  communicated  to  DG  SANCO  and 
DGT. DGT is involved in both the project 
and  the  process  as  owner  of  MT@EC, 
the  machine  translation  tool  that  will  be 
integrated into the ODR platform to allow 
traders,  consumers  and  mediators  to 
translate  the  communications  between 
each  other, 
the  ﬁ nal 
leading  up 
resolution outcome. The Centre’s service 
offer is not limited to the translation of the 
ﬁ nal resolutions. It also includes providing 
translation  material 
relevant 
machine translation engines.

the 

for 

to 

8 The DG SANCO’s unit in charge of the ODR project 
was transferred to DG JUST on 1 January 2015.

A  Service  Level Agreement  outlining  the 
preparatory work to be done in 2015 and 

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 
YEAR

the  operational  phase  to  start  in  2016 
was prepared by the Centre and received 
positive feedback from DG SANCO. This 
agreement  is  expected  to  be  signed  in 
2015,  once  the  European  Commission 
has  authorised 
recruitment  of 
the 
supplementary  human  resources.  The 
Centre  will  then  be  able  to  launch  a  call 
for  tenders  and  start  the  recruitment 
procedure for the additional staff required 
for  this  new  task.  The  developments 
relating 
the 
communication  platform  to  be  installed 
between DG SANCO and the Centre will 
be carried out in 2015.

the  workﬂ ow  and 

to 

EC DGT – EASA / ESAs
The Centre has been translating opinions 
and  draft  regulations  for  the  European 
Aviation  Safety  Agency  (EASA)  since 
2004.  These  opinions  generally  result  in 
implementing rules which are translated by 
the  European  Commission’s  Directorate-
General  for  Translation  (DGT).  Since 
2011, the Centre has also been translating 
guidelines  for  the  European  Supervisory 
Authorities (ESAs): the European Banking 
Authority (EBA), the European Securities 
and  Markets  Authority  (ESMA)  and  the 
European  Insurance  and  Occupational 
Pensions Authority (EIOPA). In 2014, DGT 
started to translate the Binding Technical 
Standards for all these agencies, often in 
parallel with the Centre’s translation of the 
guidelines.

the  need 

to  harmonise 
Aware  of 
approaches  between  the  two  language 
services, the Centre met DGT’s Demand 
Management  Unit  in  June  to  discuss 
closer cooperation. As a starting point, the 
Centre summarised the common initiatives 
undertaken by EASA, the Centre and the 
National Aviation Authorities, and outlined 
the  current  working  methods  used  for 
the  three  Supervisory  Authorities.  The 
initiatives  agreed  for  closer  cooperation 
with DGT included: sharing of glossaries 
and  reference  material;  sharing  of  list  of 
experts;  exchange  of  workload  planning 
forecasts;  appointment  of 
language-
speciﬁ c  contacts  within  both  the  Centre 

and DGT; and notiﬁ cations to DGT when 
the  Centre’s 
translations  have  been 
revised  by  national  authorities.  This 
should  result  in  better  use  of  resources, 
harmonised 
terminology  and  higher 
quality  assurance  of  documents  for  the 
beneﬁ t of all parties involved. 

translation  requests 

EASO
There  was  a  substantial  increase  in  the 
number  of 
from 
the  European  Asylum  Support  Ofﬁ ce 
(EASO).  Multilingual  communication  is 
a  vital  part  of  EASO’s  activities  given  its 
role  in  handling  cross-border  issues.  In 
fact,  translation  services  account  for  20-
25% of EASO’s budget. It is therefore no 
surprise that EASO is one of the Centre’s 
top  ﬁ ve  clients  in  terms  of  translation 
volume. The translations concerned many 
different  kinds  of  texts,  such  as  training 
materials,  country  of  origin  information 
reports, press releases, the annual report 
on the situation of asylum in the European 
Union and the work programme. Most of 
the original texts were in English and the 
target EU languages were predominantly 
Bulgarian, German, Czech and Italian, but 
also non-EU languages, such as Arabic. 

to  Luxembourg 

In  September,  EASO’s  spokesperson 
came 
for  a  seminar 
with  translators  and  other  staff  from  the 
Centre’s support sections. The aim of this 
event was to pass on information on the 
agency’s activities and working methods, 

to describe its multilingual communication 
and publications policy, and to provide an 
update  on  its  speciﬁ c  requirements  and 
expectations  in  the  ﬁ eld  of  translation. 
Discussions  with  the  participants  turned 
around  quality  assurance  measures  and 
EASO’s  key  reference  documents.  The 
agency intends to compile a new glossary, 
more focused on migration and extended 
to  all  languages.  It  was  agreed  that  the 
Centre  would  provide  guidance  and 
support for this major terminology project.

target 

ECA
As  in  previous  years,  the  Centre  helped 
out the translation service of the European 
Court  of  Auditors  (ECA)  by  providing 
translations  for  very  speciﬁ c  documents 
and 
including  an 
languages, 
Opinion of the Court and a vacancy notice 
into Irish, and the publication ‘Guardians 
of the EU’s ﬁ nances – The EU’s auditor – 
Checking EU funds around the world’ into 
Luxembourgish,  Icelandic,  Macedonian, 
Turkish and Serbian.

In July, the Head of the External Relations 
and  Communication  Section  was  invited 
by  the  Court’s  Director  of  Translation 
to  a  brainstorming  session  with  her 
Heads  of  Unit  on  the  topic  ‘Measuring 
and  handling  client  satisfaction’.  After  a 
presentation  of  the  functioning,  beneﬁ ts 
and drawbacks of the feedback handling 
system  put  in  place  at  the  Centre,  the 
participants  looked  more  closely  at  the 

  Seminar with EASO’s spokesperson

9

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR

2014

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR

2014

pros  and  cons  of  such  a  system  and 
how  it  could  possibly  be  implemented  at 
the Court. There was general agreement 
among the participants about the need to 
carefully  deﬁ ne  and  delimit  the  concepts 
of ‘quality assurance’ vs ‘measuring client 
satisfaction / handling feedback’ and ‘ex-
post quality control exercises’, taking into 
consideration  the  context  in  which  the 
organisation  operates.  These  reﬂ ections 
came in useful at a time when the Centre 
had 
its  own  brainstorming 
workshop on how to streamline its system 
for handling client satisfaction9.

just  held 

ECB
Compared with previous years, the Centre 
carried out a larger number of translation 
projects for the ECB in 2014 for targeted 
EU and non-EU languages, including the 
Croatian  microsite  and  microsites  for  10 
other  languages,  material  relating  to  the 
SAFE survey, and some preparatory work 
and  guidance  for  the  Single  Supervisory 
Mechanism,  the  new  system  of  banking 
supervision  for  Europe  which  came  into 
force on 4 November 2014. 

for 

translations 

to  antibiotics,  namely 

ECDC
The  majority  of 
the 
European Centre for Disease Prevention 
and  Control  (ECDC)  dealt  with  issues 
relating 
the 
European  Antibiotics  Awareness  Day. 
They  included  promotional  documents 
on  antibiotic  resistance  and  prudent 
antibiotics use aimed at both the general 
public  and  healthcare  professionals,  and 
were  mostly  translated  into  all  ofﬁ cial 
EU languages. Another important part of 
the Centre’s translation work related to the 
Mediterranean Programme for Intervention 
Epidemiology  Training  (training  modules 
etc.).  ECDC  also  contracted  translations 
of various extensive case studies on the 
outbreak of various infectious diseases. 

ECHA
After  the  drop  in  2013,  the  volume  of 
translations  for  the  European  Chemicals 
Agency  (ECHA)  was  again  on  the  rise, 
the  type  of  documents  being  as  varied 
as  usual:  complex  guidance  material, 
of 
including 
guidance  documents;  manuals;  press 
releases;  news  alerts;  decisions  of  the 
Boards  of Appeals;  and  website  content 
and  various  administrative  texts.  In  line 
with the agency’s multilingual policy, most 
of the documents were translated into all 
EU languages. 

summaries 

updates; 

Continuous  updates  were  made  to  the 
ECHA-term  site10,  whose  hosting  and 
management  has  now  been  transferred 
from the Centre to the agency.

In  May,  14  EU  agencies  met  in  Helsinki 
for  an  experience-sharing  workshop 
and 
on 
stakeholder  management 
engagement  organised  by  ECHA 
in 
cooperation  with  the  European  Union 
Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) and 
the European Institute for Gender Equality 
(EIGE).  This  workshop  was  one  of  the 
actions agreed at the agencies’ Heads of 
Communication and Information Network 
(HCIN) meeting held in Vienna in January. 
The  event  was  a  good  opportunity  for 
the Centre to raise awareness on how it 
engages and works with its clients.

The visit also allowed the Centre to meet 
a  long-standing  request  on  the  part  of 
ECHA,  namely  to  repeat  the  ‘Writing  for 
translation’  seminar  organised  for  the 
agency’s  staff  for  the  ﬁ rst  time  in  2009. 
An experienced English translator – using 
examples taken from EU texts – illustrated 
the  importance  of  plain  English  /  clear 
writing as a basic condition for producing 
good translations to some 20 members of 
the agency’s staff.

In  October,  ECHA’s  Director 
for 
Cooperation  used  the  opportunity  of  the 
Management  Board  meeting  to  visit  the 
Centre’s  new  premises,  where  he  met 

9 For further information on the Centre’s brainstorming 
exercise, see page 22.

10 See the section ‘Terminology work’ on page 18.

10

translators and other members of staff. He 
also kindly agreed to an interview, which 
was published in the second issue of the 
Centre’s  in-house  newsletter  ‘Insights/
Insides’, 
thus  providing  a  valuable 
overview  of  his  agency’s  work  and 
bringing it closer to the Centre’s staff.

the  ECHA 

In  December, 
translation 
coordinator took part in the ﬁ rst meeting of 
the Translation Contact Network organised 
by the Centre11. During the meeting, she 
discussed  the  importance  of  background 
information  and  context,  in  particular  in 
the  case  of  website  translations  with  the 
Centre’s coordinator for ECHA. Following 
this meeting a list of very useful links for 
any  ECHA  SME  (veriﬁ cation)  documents 
were  made  available  to  translators  on 
the  Centre’s  internal  reference  material 
repository and on the freelance website. 

  ECHA / Helsinki

for 

translated 

EDPS
Most  documents 
the 
European  Data  Protection  Supervisor 
(EDPS) were once again EDPS opinions 
as  well  as  summaries  on 
legislative 
proposals  and  notiﬁ cations,  but  also 
included  letters,  speeches,  statements, 
the  EDPS  newsletter,  the  annual  report 
and other information material. 

ensure 

To 
throughout 
consistency 
the  recurrent  translations,  the  Centre 
undertook  terminology  work,  which  was 
submitted to the EDPS for validation12.

11 See pages 19 and 20 for further details on the 
Translation Contact Network.

12 For further information, see ‘Terminology work’ on page 
18.

translated 

analyses/articles 

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 
YEAR

EEA
The  main  documents 
for 
the  European  Environment  Agency 
(EEA)  were  the  yearly  publication  of  the 
agency’s  Signals  publication,  including 
some  infographics;  the  ENPI  newsletter; 
and 
environmental 
website  content.  The  Centre  was  also 
involved in the translations of the agency’s 
ﬂ agship  product,  the  synthesis  report: 
‘The  European  environment  –  state  and 
outlook  2015  (SOER  2015)’  and  the 
SOER ﬂ yer. Some of the texts were also 
translated into non EU-languages such as 
Russian,  Norwegian,  Icelandic,  Turkish 
and Arabic.

The  Centre’s  Terminology  Coordination 
Team worked on the update of the GEMET 
(GEneral  Multilingual  Environmental 
Thesaurus)  entries  in  IATE,  a  project 
which will run into 201513.

to 

EFCA
After  the  decrease  of  2013,  volumes 
delivered 
the  European  Fisheries 
Control  Agency  (EFCA)  were  above  the 
2012 ﬁ gures. The Centre mainly translated 
a number of conﬁ dential documents, such 
as  decisions,  and  a  few  ﬁ nancial  texts. 
Most  texts  received  were  translated  into 
a number of speciﬁ c EU languages, and 
some into just one target language.

EFSA
In 2014, the translations requested by the 
European  Food  Safety  Authority  (EFSA) 
consisted  mostly  of  press  releases,  web 
stories and other public relations materials 
aimed at disseminating key information on 
pertinent food safety issues to the general 
public.  In  addition,  EFSA  continued  to 
require  translations  of  scientiﬁ c  ﬁ ndings 
and  assessments,  including  from  non-
EU  languages  such  as  Japanese  and 
Chinese.  With  the  exception  of  tender 
speciﬁ cations  and  similar  documents 
of  an  administrative  nature,  which 

13 For further information, see ‘Terminology work’ on page 
18.

  Meeting with EIGE’s representative on the Centre’s Management Board

requested 

were  translated  into  all  EU  languages, 
EFSA  mostly 
translations 
from  and  into  French,  German,  Italian 
and  English  (sometimes  one  language 
combination  only,  e.g.  the  multiannual 
work  programme  for  2014-2016  and  the 
roadmap).  The 
scientiﬁ c  cooperation 
Centre’s  in-house  translators  continued 
to  process  valuable  feedback  provided 
by  the  client,  in  particular  for  Italian.  As 
part of a new service to be offered by the 
Centre in 2015, a number of pilot subtitling 
projects were processed for this client.

EIGE
Cooperation with the European Institute for 
Gender Equality (EIGE) was strengthened 
through  the  continuous  efforts  of  EIGE’s 
experts  to  provide  translation  feedback, 
instructions  and  reference  material  in 
the  Institute’s  working  languages,  mainly 
German, French, Spanish and Lithuanian. 
This material was carefully analysed and 
commented  back  on  by  the  Centre’s 
translators,  thus  making  the  exchange  a 
true learning experience for both sides. 

to  discuss 

In  October, 
the  Centre’s 
following 
Management  Board  meeting,  the  EIGE 
member  met  representatives  from  the 
Centre 
translation  quality 
related  matters.  In  preparation  for  the 
meeting,  she  had  provided  German, 
French  and  Lithuanian 
translations 
reviewed by her colleagues, a document 
summarising  EIGE’s  conclusions  from 
quality  reviews  of  selected  publications 
translated  by  the  Centre  in  2014,  some 
guidance  for  translators  of  texts  from 
English  into  French,  and  a  document 
listing  the  EIGE’s  criteria  for  evaluating 

the quality of translations.

the  parties 

The  meeting  enabled 
to 
better  understand  each  other’s  needs, 
constraints  and  expectations  and  made 
it  even  clearer  that  both  sides  can  learn 
from  each  other.  It  was  agreed  to  have 
the 
regular  exchanges  during 
more 
translation  process  as  well  as  on  quality 
feedback  and  to  try  to  clarify  as  much 
as  possible  gender  equality  concepts 
by  cooperating  on  EIGE’s  thesaurus/
glossary project, which is currently under 
preparation.  This  topic  was  one  of  the 
items further discussed in the framework 
of 
the  Centre’s  Translation  Contact 
Network  meeting,  where  it  captured  the 
interest of the representatives from other 
agencies,  in  particular  the  Fundamental 
Rights Agency (FRA)14.

EMA
The  year  2014  was  no  exception  in  the 
sense that the vast majority of translations 
requested  by  the  European  Medicines 
Agency  (EMA)  were  EPAR  (European 
Public  Assessment  Report)  summaries. 
Moreover,  the  Centre  continued  to  be 
involved  in  the  translation  of  product 
information  for  new  medicinal  products 
developed  by  small  and  medium-
sized  enterprises  (SMEs);  in  total  10 
in  all 
such  projects  were  processed 
EU 
languages.  The  same  complex 
procedure  involving  cooperation  with  the 
national  competent  authorities  was  used 
for a translation of one scientiﬁ c document 
on a medical product submitted to EMA in 

14 For further information on the Translation Contact 
Network meeting, see pages 19 and 20.

11

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR

2014

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR

2014

EMSA
Documents  translated  for  the  European 
Maritime  Safety  Agency  (EMSA)  ranged 
from  country-speciﬁ c  inspection  reports 
and  decisions  of  the Agency’s  Executive 
Director  to  incident  response  contracts 
International/National  Airplane 
and  an 
Exercise 
Agreement. 
Inspection  reports  and  decisions  were 
translated from English into the language 
of the respective EU country.

Participation 

ERA
The  Centre 
translated  slightly  more 
documents  for  the  European  Railway 
Agency (ERA) than in 2013: a number of 
documents  (mostly  railway  infrastructure 
procedure  descriptions)  were  translated 
from  Swedish  and  some  from  Czech 
into  English,  the  working  language  of 
the agency. Job vacancies and decisions 
concerning national railway matters were 
translated from Czech, Romanian, Italian 
and  Estonian  into  English.  The  biggest 
documents  were  two  national  railway 
reports  (Polish-English,  about  80  pages 
each)  and  one  ﬁ nal  report  about  the 
serious  railway  accident  near  Santiago 
de Compostela Station from Spanish into 
English (110 pages).

there 

Based  on  the  Service  Level  Agreement 
signed at the end of 2013, the Centre took 
over  the  hosting  of  ERA’s  IT  equipment 
for  business  continuity  at 
its  highly-
secured Data Centre located 20 km from 
the  Centre’s  premises.  ERA 
installed 
in  May.  During 
its  equipment 
the 
the  Centre  delivered 
all  the  necessary  support  in  order  to 
establish  the  connection  between  ERA 
and  the  Data  Centre  via  an  international 
telecommunication 
line.  The  service, 
internet  access,  has  been 
including 
fully  operational  since  June  to  the  entire 
satisfaction of the agency.

installation, 

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 
YEAR

  ERA’s IT equipment for business continuity at the 
Centre’s highly-secured Data Centre

the 

ESAs
In  2014,  the  Centre  undertook  more 
translation  and  English  editing  work 
for 
three  European  Supervisory 
Authorities  (European  Banking  Authority 
– EBA; European Securities and Markets 
Authority  –  ESMA;  and  European 
Insurance  and  Occupational  Pensions 
Authority – EIOPA) than the previous year.

EBA

As the EBA’s working language is English, 
a large part of the work for the EBA was 
English  editing.  This  covered  a  range  of 
documents, including consultation papers, 
draft regulatory or technical implementing 
standards for submission to the European 
Commission  before  adoption,  and  other 
studies  of  the  ﬁ nancial  markets.  Many 
these  documents  were  published 
of 
in  English  only  on  the  EBA  website. 
Translations concerned mainly guidelines 
material,  which  was  made  available  in 
all  EU  languages. The  Centre  continued 
its  efforts  to  develop  more  specialist 
knowledge  in  the  EU  banking  ﬁ eld  by 
inviting  specialists  to  hold  workshops  on 
its premises towards the end of the year17. 

A  meeting  held  in  October  at  the  EBA 
premises  in  London  allowed  the  Centre 
to  clarify  aspects  surrounding  the  EBA 
workload  planning  and  forecasting,  to 
exchange information on instructions and 
reference  material  to  bear  in  mind  for 
editing work, to discuss language-speciﬁ c 
issues resulting from translation feedback 
provided  by  the  national  authorities,  to 
debrief  the  EBA  on  the  meeting  held 
with  DGT’s  Demand  Management  Unit18 

17 For further information on these events, see page 35.

18 For further information on this meeting, see the section 
on ‘EC DGT - EASA / ESAs’ on page 9.

and  to  look  into  the  feasibility  of  having 
the multilingual glossary prepared by the 
Centre based on guidelines translated for 
the EBA validated by the national experts.

EIOPA

translated 

the  highly 

technical  nature  of 
Given 
the  documents  EIOPA  asks  the  Centre 
to  translate,  a  bilateral  meeting  was 
organised in Frankfurt in April 2014 in order 
to strengthen the cooperation between the 
two agencies. It was decided to create a 
glossary of terms extracted from a number 
legislation, 
including  EU 
of  sources, 
documents  previously 
for 
EIOPA that had been validated by national 
authorities and EIOPA consultation papers 
and  guidelines.  The  list  of  terms  in  all 
languages  was  then  sent  to  the  national 
authorities  for  validation  and  ﬁ nalised 
before 
the  Frankfurt-based  agency 
submitted  requests  for  the  translation  of 
several hundred pages of very specialised 
documents  relating  to  the  Solvency  2 
Directive into all ofﬁ cial EU languages, a 
project which was still ongoing at the end 
of 2014.

ESMA

the  Centre  continued 
For  ESMA, 
translate  guidelines  on  various 
to 
the  securities’  markets, 
aspects  of 
supervision  and  regulation  and  some 
administrative  documents.  ESMA’s  Head 
of  Communication  provided  information 
on  validated  material  published  on  the 
agency’s website to be used as reference 
material  for  translations,  and  agreed  to 
the  Centre’s  suggestion  of  arranging  a 
meeting in 2015 to discuss the agency’s 
speciﬁ c needs.

ETF
In  line  with  its  mission,  the  European 
Training  Foundation  (ETF)’s  translation 
needs  covered  the  languages  of  the 
agency’s  countries  of  activity  –  namely 
countries  bordering 
the  EU.  Country 
ﬁ les,  conference  material  and  reports 
on  the  Mediterranean  region  were  often 
into  French  and/or  Arabic. 
translated 

Administrative  documents,  such  as 
minutes  and 
letters,  were  commonly 
made  available  in  the  ﬁ ve  languages  of 
the  ETF’s  Governing  Board  –  English, 
German,  French,  Italian  and  Spanish. 
Some  event  and  project  documentation, 
e.g.  for  the  ETF  conferences  ‘Making 
better  qualiﬁ cations’  and 
‘Local  skills 
matter  –  Multilevel  Governance  and 
Entrepreneurial  communities’,  was  also 
translated  into  Russian.  An  important 
project  was  the  ‘Frame:  skills  for  the 
future’  guide  and  related  material,  which 
was translated into Macedonian, Serbian, 
Albanese and Turkish.

Following  the  interesting  seminar  on  the 
ETF held in 2013, the Centre decided to 
produce a series of client dossiers for its 
new in-house newsletter ‘Insights/Insides’. 
It started by interviewing the ETF’s Head 
of  Communication,  who  provided  highly 
valuable  information  on  the  agency  and 
its activities.

eu-LISA
eu-LISA,  the  Agency  for  the  operational 
management of large-scale IT systems in 
the area of freedom, security and justice, 
operates from three sites: the headquarter 
is in Tallinn, Estonia, while the operational 
management  of  the  large-scale  systems 
is carried out in Strasbourg, France, and 
there is a backup site in Sankt Johann im 
Pongau, Austria. The agency is in charge 
of instruments which are essential in the 
implementation  of  EU  asylum,  migration 
and  border  management  policies: 
it 
manages  EURODAC,  a  large  database 
of  ﬁ ngerprints  of  asylum-seekers  and 
illegal  immigrants  found  within  the  EU, 
the Visa Information System (VIS) and the 
second-generation Schengen Information 
System (SIS II). It is therefore no surprise 
that eu-LISA cooperates very closely with 
the  other  agencies  which  are  part  of  the 
EU  justice  and  home  affairs  network, 
namely  EASO,  Europol,  Eurojust, 
CEPOL,  Frontex,  EIGE,  FRA  and  the 
EMCDDA19.  Translation  volumes  for  this 

19 See brochure The EU justice and home affairs 
agencies at http://eige.europa.eu/sites/default/ﬁ les/
BZ0414283ENC_web.pdf.

13

  EMA’s French national expert meeting the French in-house translators

the framework of a referral procedure.

terminology  across  all 

During  the  summer,  the  Centre  initiated 
a  thorough  review  of  selected  Croatian 
templates  in  order  to  bring  into  line 
template 
the 
documents  in  this  latest  addition  to  the 
ofﬁ cial EU languages. In cooperation with 
EMA and the Croatian national competent 
in 
authority, 
clarifying  certain 
issues, 
thus  harmonising  all  templates  to  the 
maximum  extent  possible.  On  a  related 
note,  towards  the  end  of  the  year,  EMA 
requested the translation of a new version 
of a template for the herbal list entries into 
all languages as this document had been 
further developed and updated.

the  Centre  succeeded 

terminology 

in  2015 

The Centre attended two regular plenary 
meetings  of  EMA’s  Working  Group  on 
Quality  Review  of  Documents  (QRD),  in 
June  and  October.  At  the  last  meeting, 
the  Centre’s 
in 
involvement 
the  translation  of  a  large  number  of 
recommendations 
to  update  product 
information 
for  nationally  authorised 
products  following  signal  assessments 
was  discussed  with  a  view  to  ﬁ nding  a 
suitable  arrangement  for  the  processing 
of  these  documents,  both  by  the  Centre 
and the national authorities. 

translators 

In  December,  a  French  national  expert 
visited  the  Centre  and  met  the  French 
in-house 
exchange 
information  on  translation  workﬂ ow  and 
quality  assurance  at  the  Centre  and 
on  the  linguistic  review  process  by  the 
national authority, and to address certain 

to 

12

improve 

terminology  issues.  The  meeting  proved 
very beneﬁ cial to all participants and will 
certainly 
future  cooperation, 
particularly  in  the  area  of  SME  projects. 
A similar meeting, this time with members 
team  and 
of 
representatives  of  the  German  national 
competent  authorities,  was  agreed  for 
January 2015. 

the  German 

in-house 

(EMCDDA), 

EMCDDA
Once  again,  the  European  Drug  Report 
the 
the  ﬂ agship  publication  of 
was 
European  Monitoring  Centre  for  Drug 
and  Drug  Addiction 
for 
which  the  Centre  provided  translations 
in all EU languages, plus Norwegian and 
Turkish. The project was presented as a 
good  practice  example  at  the  Centre’s 
Translation Contact Network meeting15 in 
December, as it had gone very smoothly 
from different perspectives: planning and 
forecasting;  communication 
throughout 
the  production  process,  handling  of 
translation  feedback  and  supply  of  ﬁ nal 
versions for publication.

agency 

enriched 

its 
further 
The 
multilingual  glossary  of  key  terms,  and 
discussions  took  place  with  the  Centre’s 
Terminology  Coordination  Team  on  a 
this  resource, 
possible 
already available in IATE, as a specialised 
microthesaurus 
the  Publications 
Ofﬁ ce’s EuroVoc database16. 

integration  of 

in 

15 For further information on the Translation Contact 
Network meeting, see page 19 and 20. 

16 For further information on EuroVoc, see summary on 
EU-OSHA on page 14.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR

2014

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR

2014

agency increased strongly compared with 
previous years.

A  mission  to  Tallinn  was  included  in  the 
Centre’s client visit plan for 2014 with the 
twofold  aim  of  presenting  the  Centre,  its 
services, workﬂ ows and quality assurance 
mechanisms to the agency’s staff, and to 
gather  information  about  the  agency’s 
speciﬁ c  requirements,  such  as  planned 
volumes (forecasts), language needs, text 
types  and  formats,  reference  materials 
(documents or terminology), and speciﬁ c 
projects and instructions.

Two main points were taken on board from 
this  visit:  the  Centre  can  play  an  active 
role in assisting new agencies in deﬁ ning 
their  multilingual  policies  and  setting 
up 
translation  being 
an  integral  element  of  communication, 
interinstitutional 
and 
stakeholder relations.

their  workﬂ ows, 

cooperation 

The  Centre  could  further  explore  the 
potential of involving itself in translations 
of  EU-classiﬁ ed,  sensitive  material  for 
the agencies which are part of the justice 
and  home  affairs  network.  Based  on  its 
experience with translations for Europol in 
the past, the Centre is indeed well-placed 
to offer its services in this respect. 

EU-OSHA
In  2014,  cooperation  with  the  European 
Agency  for  Safety  and  Health  at  Work 
(EU-OSHA)  continued  to  be  effective 
and  positive  with  respect  to  the  Centre 
delivering translation services for material 
as  varied  as  website  content,  campaign 
documents,  brochures,  e-Facts,  or 
publications  such  as  the  annual  activity 
report, 
the  strategic  programme  and 
the  management  plan.  Furthermore, 
cooperation  was  also  marked  by 
innovation in the sense that progress was 
made  on  two  projects  important  to  the 
agency:

Capitalising on the meeting held between 
the agency, the Publications Ofﬁ ce and the 
Centre in autumn 2013, the three parties 
worked further towards the integration of 

14

EU-OSHA’s thesaurus (roughly 1 400 key 
terms  with  deﬁ nitions  in  22  languages 
validated  by  the  National  Focal  Points) 
into  IATE,  the  update  and  extension  of 
concepts  to  cover  24  languages  (adding 
Norwegian and Turkish), and their linkage 
to  EuroVoc  via  a  single  identiﬁ er  (URI  – 
Unique  Resource  Identiﬁ er).  EuroVoc  is 
used for indexing websites and documents 
and for information retrieval in EUR-Lex, 
EU-Bookshop, etc. but is also consulted by 
users in public administrations, the private 
sector  and  the  academic  world.  The 
Publications Ofﬁ ce’s objective is to enrich 
EuroVoc  with  the  existing  vocabularies 
from the specialised EU agencies and to 
disseminate  those  vocabularies  through 
the EuroVoc website in the PO Common 
Portal  and  as  datasets  in  the  EU  Open 
Data  Portal.  The  Centre  submitted  a 
project proposal and cost estimates to EU-
OSHA, and implementation of the project 
is expected to run throughout 2015. The 
dissemination  of  specialised  EU-OSHA 
terminology  via  these  well-known  and 
trusted  platforms  will  help  communicate 
reliable and up-to-date terminology in EU-
OSHA’s ﬁ eld of activity to the stakeholders 
and  citizens.  It  will  thereby  increase  the 
visibility of the agency itself.

(CMS) 

In  2014,  EU-OSHA  put  in  place  a  new 
IT  platform  and  Content  Management 
its  website  and 
for 
System 
undertook  a  complete  redesign  of  the 
site’s  structure  and  contents.  This 
was  a  good  time  for  examining  how  to 
streamline  translations  of  web  content 
with  the  Centre.  The  agency  found  the 
solution by benchmarking with the Ofﬁ ce 
for  Harmonization  in  the  Internal  Market 
(OHIM), which, with the launch of its new 
website  in  2013,  had  introduced  a  tool 
which  allows  its  staff  to  easily  compile 
web  content  into  an  XML  ﬁ le,  send  it  to 
the  Centre  for  translation  and  have  the 
translated content uploaded again by the 
Centre  to  the  OHIM  website  without  any 
intervention  before 
further  copy-paste 
publishing  the  content.  This  innovation 
project  was  discussed  in  a  meeting  in 
June  in  Bilbao  with  representatives  from 
EU-OSHA, the Centre, OHIM, Eurofound 

EU-OSHA:
The Centre started working with the 
agency and the Publications Ofﬁ ce on the 
integration of EU-OSHA’s thesaurus of 
roughly 1 400 key terms in 22 languages 
into IATE and EuroVoc.

Eurofound:
A major project consisted in providing 
translations for Eurofound’s redeveloped 
website with more extensive multilingual 
content.

and external contractors in charge of the 
technical  integration  of  OHIM’s  tool  with 
the  EU-OSHA’s  CMS.  After  further  tests 
throughout the second half of the year, the 
new  way  of  processing  web  translation 
requests  was  implemented  to  the  great 
satisfaction  of  both  EU-OSHA  and  the 
Centre. The web upload functionality was 
ofﬁ cially  added  to  the  Centre’s  pricing 
structure 
the  Management 
Board’s decision in October.

following 

for 

the 

and 

Foundation 

Eurofound
Translation  activities  for  the  European 
Foundation 
Improvement 
of  Living  and  Working  Conditions 
(Eurofound) remained similar to previous 
types  of  documents 
years.  Different 
were 
including:  executive 
translated, 
summaries  on  a  great  variety  of  topics; 
recurrent publications such as Foundation 
Focus, 
Findings 
promotional  brochures,  study  or  survey 
reports,  the  annual  report  (Yearbook), 
annual  work 
budget, 
selection procedures and agenda/minutes 
of  meetings.  Résumés  and  all  executive 
summaries of reports were translated into 
all EU languages and the languages of two 
candidate countries, the Former Yugoslav 
Republic of Macedonia and Turkey; some 
survey material was also provided in other 
languages  such  as  Russian, 
non-EU 
Albanian, Serbian and Montenegrin.

programme, 

A  major  project  consisted  in  providing 
translations  for  Eurofound’s  redeveloped 

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 
YEAR

  Meeting EU-OSHA - Publications Ofﬁ ce - Centre on IATE / EuroVoc

website  with  more  extensive  multilingual 
content.  At  the  meeting  in  Bilbao  with 
representatives  from  EU-OSHA,  OHIM 
and  the  Centre,  Eurofound  expressed 
for 
in  adopting 
interest 
the  solution 
streamlined  website 
translation  using 
the web upload function implemented by 
OHIM  and  EU-OSHA20.  This  request  will 
be followed up in 2015.

term 

Eurojust
Translations carried out for the European 
Judicial  Cooperation  Unit 
(Eurojust) 
during  2014  covered  the  budget,  the 
annual  report  2013  and  a 
list 
covering  the  keywords  for  this  report. 
Based  on 
feedback 
language-speciﬁ c 
on  the  previous  year’s  annual  report, 
extensive  preparatory  work  had  been 
performed by the Centre’s Language and 
Technology Support Section (both in terms 
of terminology research and feeding of the 
dedicated translation memories) to ensure 
that the comments from the national desks 
were  taken  as  reference  material  for  the 
annual  report  2013.  Once  again,  the 
national  desks  provided  comprehensive 
feedback  on  the  translations  in  the  form 
of  track  change  versions,  which  helped 
ﬁ nalise the documents for publication on 
Eurojust’s  website  and  will  feed  into  the 
translations of next year’s report.

20 For further details, see the section on ‘EU-OSHA’ on 
page 14.

translated 

Europol
The  documents 
the 
European Police Ofﬁ ce (Europol) included 
minutes  of  the  Joint  Supervisory  Board 
meetings, letters and public notices. As for 
the previous year, volumes were fairly low.

for 

to 
Europol  responded  very  positively 
the  Centre’s  initiative  to  organise  an 
awareness-raising 
the 
agency’s work for translators and staff in 
the support sections. However, the event 
had  to  be  postponed  due  to  Europol’s 
heavy operational workload in 2014.

seminar 

on 

Executive Agencies
With  effect  from  1  January  2014,  the 
following  three  Executive Agencies  have 
been  operating  under  a  new  name  and 
acronym,  which  for  the  Centre  meant 
changing 
these 
clients  as  well  as  their  accounts  in  the 
various  IT  systems  used  to  oversee  the 
request and invoicing workﬂ ow. 

the  agreements  with 

EACI (now: EASME) 

A  reﬁ nement  of  scope  has  become 
effective  for  the  Executive  Agency  for 
Competitiveness  and  Innovation,  which 
is  now  the  Executive  Agency  for  Small 
and Medium-sized enterprises (EASME). 
The  Agency  is  responsible  for  most  of 
COSME,  the  EU  programme  for  the 

Competitiveness of Enterprises and Small 
and  Medium-sized  Enterprises  (SMEs), 
including  Enterprise  Europe  Network 
(EEN),  Your  Europe  Business  and  the 
European IPR Helpdesk; part of Horizon 
2020,  the  EU  Framework  Programme 
for  Research  and  Innovation,  and  in 
particular: the SME instrument; the Energy 
Efﬁ ciency part of the programme ‘Secure, 
Clean and Efﬁ cient Energy’; the calls for 
proposals  in  the  ﬁ elds  of  waste,  water 
innovation and sustainable supply of raw 
material  under  the  challenge  ‘Climate 
action, Environment, Resource Efﬁ ciency 
and  Raw  Materials’;  some  areas  of  the 
‘Industrial 
the 
EU  programme  for  the  Environment  and 
Climate action (LIFE); part of the European 
Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF); the 
legacy of the Intelligent Energy – Europe 
programme  and  the  legacy  of  the  Eco-
innovation  initiative.  The  EASME  also 
organises  the  EU  Sustainable  Energy 
Week (EUSEW). 

leadership’  challenge; 

EAHC (now: Chafea) 

The  agency’s  mandate  was 
further 
extended  until  2024  and  the  agency’s 
name changed to the Consumers, Health 
and  Food  Executive  Agency  (Chafea), 
which is tasked with the implementation of 
the EU Health Programme, the Consumer 
Programme  and  the  Better  Training  for 
Safer Food initiative. At the end of 2014, 
the Agency saw its remit further extended 
to the area of agriculture, so the full name 
now reads Consumers, Health, Agriculture 
and Food Executive Agency (Chafea). 

15

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR

2014

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR

2014

TEN-T EA (now: INEA) 

The  Trans-European  Transport  Network 
Executive  Agency  (TEN-T  EA),  which 
was set up by the European Commission 
in  2006  to  manage  the  technical  and 
ﬁ nancial  implementation  of  its  TEN-T 
programme,  has  become  the  Innovation 
and  Networks  Executive Agency  (INEA). 
INEA’s  mission  is  to  implement  parts  of 
the EU programmes: Connecting Europe 
Facility  (CEF),  Horizon  2020  and  the 
legacy  programmes:  TEN-T  and  Marco 
Polo 2007-2013. 

This  scope  extension  should  lead  to 
increased  translation  work  from  these 
three  Executive  Agencies  in  the  coming 
years.

EACEA 

replaces 

With  effect  from  1  January  2014,  a 
new  series  of  EU  funding  programmes 
for  education, 
training,  youth,  sport, 
audiovisual,  culture,  EU  aid  volunteers 
and  citizenship  has  been  approved  for 
the  Education,  Audiovisual  and  Culture 
Executive  Agency  (EACEA):  Creative 
Europe,  which 
the  MEDIA, 
MEDIA Mundus and Culture programmes; 
Erasmus+;  which  covers 
the  seven 
previous  programmes:  Lifelong  Learning 
Programme 
(Erasmus,  Leonardo  da 
Vinci,  Comenius  and  Grundtvig),  Youth 
in  Action,  Erasmus  Mundus,  Tempus, 
Alfa,  Edulink  and  the  Programme  for 
cooperation  with  industrialised  countries. 
Erasmus+  also  includes  actions  in  the 
ﬁ eld  of  sport; 
for  Citizens’; 
‘Europe 
and  EU  aid  volunteers.  The  Agency 
will  continue  to  be  responsible  for  the 
management  of  the  Eurydice  Network, 
which analyses and compares education 
systems and policies in Europe. 

traditionally 

The  EACEA 
requests 
translation  of  invitations  to  tender  in  all 
EU  languages,  destined  for  publication 
the  Ofﬁ cial  Journal.  Programme 
in 
summaries  and  reports  are  translated 
in  the  working  languages  of  the  EU  – 
English,  French  and  German.  In  line 
with  the  general  tendency  towards  web 

16

content  translation,  EACEA  started  to 
request  translations  of  publications  for 
their  website.  The  texts  are  explanatory 
notes to calls for tender and programme 
action summaries.

FRA
A strong increase in volume was recorded 
for 
for 
the  European  Union  Agency 
Fundamental Rights (FRA). The types of 
documents  were  varied,  including  topic 
reports,  the  newsletter  ‘Weekly  inFRA’, 
press  releases,  material  for  meetings/
conferences, survey material (e.g. on the 
topics  ‘violence  against  women’,  ‘LGBTI’ 
and  ‘Roma’),  speeches,  handbooks  (e.g. 
on European data protection law or asylum, 
border and immigration) and infographics, 
the  annual  report  ‘Fundamental  rights: 
challenges  and  achievements  in  2013’, 
the  annual  activity  report,  annual  work 
programme,  strategic  plan,  budget  and 
minutes of meetings and letters. The main 
languages  requested  were  German  and 
French. Some targeted publications were 
translated into all EU languages.

In  2014,  FRA  took  over  the  coordination 
of the network of EU Agencies from ERA 
thus  steering  the  work  of  the  Heads  of 
Agencies,  with  three  meetings  during 
the  year,  as  well  as  of  the  different  sub-
networks.  The  Centre  was  particularly 
involved in three activities included in the 
Heads of Communication and Information 
Network’s  ambitious  work  programme, 
namely:  the  survey  on  EU  Agencies’ 
approaches 
to  multilingualism  with 
resulting recommendations for the Heads 
of  Agencies21;  the  new  EU  Agencies’ 
brochure released in English, German and 
French for the EU Agencies’ exhibition at 
the European Parliament in October22; and 
the  Stakeholder  engagement  workshop 
organised by ECHA and FRA23.

21 For further information, see page 25.

22 For further information, see page 33.

23 For further information, see the summary on ‘ECHA’ 
on page 10.

  New EU Agencies’ brochure 

Frontex
The documents translated for the Agency 
the  Management  of  Operational 
for 
Cooperation  at 
the  External  Borders 
of  the  Member  States  of  the  European 
the  work 
Union 
programme, the general report and some 
administrative  and  budgetary  documents 
translated into all EU languages, as well 
as  the  code  of  conduct  for  joint  return 
operations 
into  Georgian, 
translated 
Albanese and Serbian.

(Frontex) 

included 

in  past  years,  OHIM 

OHIM
As 
remained 
the  Centre’s  major  client.  The  Centre 
translated  or  edited  94  604  pages  of 
administrative  documents  for  the  Ofﬁ ce, 
including  the  editing  of  16  989  pages  of 
opposition or cancellation decisions. The 
volume  of 
translations  of  Community 
Trade Marks amounted to 481 234 pages, 
representing  63.5%  of  the  total  volume 
produced by the Centre in 2014. The two 
agencies  started  using  the  web  services 
they  had  developed 
the 
translations  of  new  terms  submitted  by 
the national ofﬁ ces for the classiﬁ cation of 
goods  and  services.  Over  18  000  terms 
were provided by the Centre via the new 
Terminology Management Console.

to  provide 

The development of the close relationship 
between OHIM and the Centre continued 
in 2014 as in previous years through the 
monthly  videoconferences.  In  addition, 
OHIM visited the Centre four times, twice 
on  the  occasion  of  the  Management 
Board  meetings  in  March  and  October, 

in  OHIM’s 

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 
YEAR

once  in  June,  on  the  occasion  of  a  two-
day visit to Luxembourg by a Translation 
Workﬂ ow  Manager 
IP 
Translations  and  Linguistic  Coordination 
Sector  and  a  German  linguist  in  OHIM’s 
Translation  Revision  and  Proofreading 
Sector,  and  once  in  December,  when 
the Head of OHIM’s Translation Revision 
and  Proofreading  Sector 
attended 
the  ﬁ rst  meeting  of 
the  Translation 
Contact  Network24.  The  intensity  of  the 
exchanges allowed both organisations to 
reach  an  unprecedented  level  of  mutual 
understanding  of  each  other’s  activities 
and  processes.  This  had  a  particularly 
positive 
raising 
in 
awareness  of  the  quality  the  Centre 
delivers  to  its  main  client.  The  ex-post 
quality  control  exercises  carried  out  on 
both  sides  on  administrative  documents 
and  trade  marks  revealed  a  constantly 
high  quality  level  in  the  translations, 
immense  satisfaction  of  both 
the 
to 
organisations.

terms  of 

impact 

The  Centre  carried  out  four  quarterly 
EPQC  exercises  on  a  little  over  17% 
of  Community  trade  mark  translations, 
covering up to 44 language pairs. About 110 
man-days  were  dedicated  by  the  Centre 
to these ex-post quality checks, which in 
general revealed a downward trend in the 
number  of  errors  identiﬁ ed  in  the  CTM 
translations,  with  an  error  rate  slightly 
exceeding 1% when measured at segment 
level25. In parallel, OHIM also continued to 
carry  out  its  own  ex-post  quality  checks 
on  the  administrative  translations  and 
editing services performed by the Centre, 
in  order  to  comply  with  international 
quality  certiﬁ cation  requirements.  These 
EPQC  exercises  were  implemented  at 
OHIM  in  April  2014.  Three  exercises 
were  completed  by  the  Ofﬁ ce,  in  Q1-
Q2-Q3/2014,  with  the  following  results: 
100%  (Q1),  88%  (Q2)  and  97%  (Q3)  of 
the administrative translations were found 
by  OHIM  to  be  either  excellent  or  ﬁ t  for 
purpose. For editing, 98% (Q1), 96% (Q2) 

24 For further information on the Translation Contact 
Network meeting, see pages 19 and 20.

25 For further information on EPQC results for CTMs, see 
page 20.

and  97%  (Q3)  of  documents  delivered 
were found to be either excellent or ﬁ t for 
purpose.

At  OHIM’s  request, 
the  Centre  had 
produced  a  paper  in  2013  outlining  the 
principles of a uniﬁ ed workﬂ ow to avoid the 
duplication  of  efforts  and  to  ﬁ nd  ways  of 
reducing the overall time from application 
to  publication  of  a  Community  Trade 
Mark.  The  various  details  concerning 
the  adaptation  of  workﬂ ows  and  the 
savings in cost and time in the paper were 
discussed on both sides and between the 
two organisations, but reached a standstill 
just  before  summer  2014,  as  more  in-
depth investigation was needed to assess 
the  scope  of  the  impacts  on  the  two 
organisations’ structures and processes.

the  necessary 

In 2013, the Centre had agreed to return 
7% of the trade mark translations ahead 
of  time  as  of  2014.  The  efforts  to  reach 
this  goal  were  exclusively  made 
in-
technical 
house,  once 
developments  had  been 
implemented 
in  the  workﬂ ow  system.  Gradually  the 
monthly  early  return  rates 
increased 
from around 2% in January to over 7% in 
December, with peaks of up to over 10% 
in  the  course  of  the  year  to  compensate 
for the initial gap. The ﬁ nal ﬁ gure for the 
year was 7.03% of translated Community 
Trade Marks delivered earlier.

A  very  interesting  and  challenging  pilot 
project  was  launched  at  the  beginning 
of  the  year:  subtitling  of  video  material 
to  be  published  on  the  OHIM  website. A 
ﬁ rst video was selected for the exercise, 
and  the  Centre  set  out  to  identify  and 
deﬁ ne the task, the most efﬁ cient working 
methods, 
the 
the  appropriate 
applicable  formats  and  the  most  ﬂ exible 
output  options.  After  having 
learned 
a  totally  new  approach  very  different 
from  ‘standard’  translation,  the  Centre 
produced the subtitles in four languages. 
The  experience  thus  gained  and  further 
ﬁ ne  tuning  of  the  process  would  allow 
the  Centre  to  add  subtitling  to  its  list  of 
standard services offered to its clients as 
of January 2015.

tools, 

On 17 November 2014, the Centre’s Acting 
Director,  Ms  Marie-Anne  Fernández, 
visited  OHIM  in  Alicante  to  attend  the 
the  Ofﬁ ce 
conference  organised  by 
to  celebrate  its  20th  anniversary.  She 
offered  the  Ofﬁ ce’s  President  a  plaque 
commemorating the 20 years of business 
relations between the two agencies. The 
plaque  illustrates  the  ﬁ rst  Community 
Trade Mark translated by the Centre into 
10 languages.

20 years doing business together

  20 years of business relations OHIM - Translation 
Centre: plaque illustrating the ﬁ rst Community Trade 
Mark translated by the Centre

texts 

included 

translated 

Ombudsman
The  many 
for 
the 
Ombudsman 
summaries 
reports, 
of  decisions  on  complaints, 
information notes, corporate presentations 
and  brochures,  correspondence,    the 
annual report and the Strategy for 2015-
2019.  Many  of  these  documents  were 
translated into all EU languages.

17

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR

2014

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR

2014

REGULAR COOPERATION WITH THE OTHER CLIENTS

The Centre continued cooperating efﬁ ciently with all the other clients with the following trend in volumes:

An increase could be perceived for 
two clients:

  Agency for the Cooperation of Energy 

Regulators (ACER)

  European Investment Bank (EIB)

  European Union Agency for Network 
and Information Security (ENISA)

  Fusion  for  Energy  Joint  Undertaking 

  European  Institute  of  Innovation  and 

(F4E)

Technology (EIT)

For ﬁ ve clients, the volume remained 
more or less stable:

  Clean Sky Joint Undertaking (CSJU)

  European Defence Agency (EDA)

  European 

Research 

Council 

Executive Agency (ERCEA)

  SESAR Joint Undertaking (SJU)

  Fuel  Cells  and  Hydrogen  Joint 

Undertaking (FCH)

Translation volumes decreased for the 
following eight clients:

  Body  of  European  Regulators  for 
Electronic  Communication  (BEREC) 
Ofﬁ ce 

  European Police College (CEPOL)

TERMINOLOGY WORK

  European GNSS Agency (GSA)

  Innovative  Medicines  Initiative  Joint 

Undertaking (IMI JU)

  Research Executive Agency (REA)

There  were  no 
translation  activities 
for  the  Committees  (Committee  of  the 
Regions / European Economic and Social 
Committee),  the  Directorate-General  for 
Translation  of  the  European  Parliament, 
the  European  Union  Satellite  Centre 
(EUSC) and MAOC, the Maritime Analysis 
and Operation Centre (Narcotics).

in  previous  years, 

THE AGENCIES’ BUDGET PUBLICATIONS
the  Centre 
As 
continued  to  coordinate  the  multilingual 
joint  publication  of  the  agencies’  budget 
budget 
summaries 

amending 

and 

summaries as a free service offered to its 
clients.

In  2014,  in  close  cooperation  with  the 
Publications Ofﬁ ce, the Centre organised 
publications  in  February,  March,  May, 
September  and  December  for  a  total 
number of 95 budget summaries published 
in 23 languages.

THE AGENCIES REPLIES TO 
OBSERVATIONS FROM THE COURT OF 
AUDITORS (ECA)
The  Centre  was  once  again  responsible 
for translating into all ofﬁ cial EU languages 
the replies from each of the EU agencies 
to the observations of the European Court 
of  Auditors  which  had  been  drawn  up 
after  the  Court’s  audit  of  the  agencies’ 
accounts.

This  is  a  large  project,  beginning  in  the 
summer  and  running  until  publication  of 
all  the  Court’s  observations  and  agency 
replies  in  the  Ofﬁ cial  Journal  at  the  end 
of the year.

The Centre continued to enlarge its terminology resources with a view to increasing the quality and consistency of the 
translations it provides to its clients. The following terminology projects were completed in 2014:

  EIOPA: 

terminology  project  on 
Solvency II carried out in cooperation 
with  the  client.  120  concepts  were 
selected  and  completed  in  22  target 
languages,  which  were  validated  by 
the  national  competent  authorities. 
The  glossary  is  available  in  IATE 
for  consultation  and  used  for  term 
recognition in incoming documents.

  ECHA  1: 
the  content  of  ECHA-
term 
(http://echa-term.echa.europa.
eu/)  was  enlarged  with  multilingual 
terminology  in  the  biocides  ﬁ eld  (54 
new entries in 23 languages).

  ECHA  2:  an  update  of  the  existing 
hazard and precautionary statements 
in  ECHA-term  was  undertaken 

18

following  the  latest  adaptations  to 
technical progress (222 entries in 23 
languages).

  EMCDDA  phase  II:  the  multilingual 
collection  created 
in  2010  was 
completed  with  29  additional  entries 
in  25 
languages, 
Norwegian  and  Turkish).  The  data 
is  available  in  IATE  for  consultation 
and  is  used  for  term  recognition  in 
incoming documents.

languages  (EU 

  EDPS: 

the  existing  EDPS  web 
glossary available in EN-FR-DE was 
completed in the other EU languages 
(27  terms  in  23  languages)  and 
imported into IATE.

  Eurojust:  preparation  of  a  term  list 
(205  entries  in  24  languages)  in 
cooperation with the client in view of 
the  translation  of  the  annual  report 
2013.  The  glossary  is  available  in 
IATE for consultation.

The  Centre’s  Terminology  Coordination 
Team  also  worked  closely  with 
the 
following 
speciﬁ c 
support and advice:

clients,  providing 

  EEA:  update  of 

IATE  entries 
with  the  2014  version  of  GEMET 
(GEneral  Multilingual  Environmental 
received 
Thesaurus) 
the 
European 
Environment  Agency 
(5 340 terms in 32 languages).

from 

two-folded 

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 
YEAR

  EU-OSHA: 
project 
consisting 
in:  1)  a  multilingual 
thesaurus  (roughly  1  400  entries 
in  22  languages)  that  will  link  IATE 
and  EuroVoc  (the  thesaurus  created 
the  Publications  Ofﬁ ce  used 
by 
indexing  Europa.eu,  EUR-Lex 
for 
and  the  EU-Bookshop)  and  2)  the 
expansion of the microthesaurus with 
new concepts26.

  EFSA: analysis of the enlarged Italian 
glossary  (1  016  terms)  provided  by 
EFSA  and  update  of  the  Scientiﬁ c 
Panel  names  list  (11  names  in  DE-
FR-IT).

  EIB: the Centre provided the technical 
and  linguistic  support  to  the  EIB  for 
the preparation of 220 entries in EN-
FR-DE that were imported into IATE.

26 For further details, see the summary on ‘EU-OSHA’ on 
page 14.

The following projects were also launched 
in 2014, and were ongoing at the end of 
the year:

  ECB: the ECB sent a corpus of 2 477 
entries in 24 languages to the Centre 
for analysis and feedback with a view 
to  sharing  these  data  in  IATE  in  the 
near future.

  EDPS: in addition to the terminology 
project ﬁ nalised in 2014 (see page 18), 
the Centre extracted 85 entries from 
key  regulations  and  annual  reports 
in English. In July 2014, the list was 
sent to the EDPS for validation. The 
multilingual part will be carried out in 
2015.

  EMA:  an  update  of 

the  existing 
glossary  of  2008  (231  entries  in  23 
languages) was launched, with a full 
revision  of  the  English  and  Italian 

versions  in  2014.  Other  languages 
will be revised in 2015. The glossary 
was completed in Croatian in January 
2015.

  EMCDDA:  53  terms  with  deﬁ nitions 
were  sent 
the 
EMCDDA and will be completed in 25 
languages in 2015.

for  approval 

to 

One of the key activities in 2014 was the 
preparation  of  the  existing  resources  for 
their  integration  into  the  new  computer-
assisted  translation  tool  which  has  been 
launched at the Centre27. The Terminology 
Coordination  Team  worked  closely  with 
the IATE Team to ensure the appropriate 
retrieval  of  the  data  from  IATE  and  their 
integration  into  the  new  term  recognition 
and term veriﬁ er modules.

27 See page 27 for further information on the new CAT 
tool.

FIRST TRANSLATION CONTACT NETWORK MEETING

The Centre’s clients are faced with increasingly complex multilingual communication projects, to be achieved within well-
established production schedules and to be launched via different channels to their numerous stakeholders and target 
audiences. Handling translation requests nowadays is therefore seldom straightforward. This led the Centre to setting up 
a Translation Contact Network, an initiative which was welcomed by the Management Board at its meeting in October 2014.

The network is intended to be a forum for 
exchanging information, experience, good 
practices  and  ideas  in  order  to  facilitate 
the 
day-to-day  operations  between 
clients and the Centre and to ﬁ nd suitable 
solutions to common matters of interest.

On  2  December  2014,  22  client 
representatives,  mostly  staff  responsible 
for  planning  and  placing 
translation 
requests  for  their  organisation,  met  the 
Centre’s staff from various departments at 
the Network’s kick-off meeting.

In  her  opening  address, 
the  Acting 
Director,  Ms  Marie-Anne  Fernández, 
stressed  the  importance  of  more  regular 
information  exchange  and 
and  direct 
good  practice  sharing,  and  conﬁ rmed 
the  Centre’s  commitment  to  catering  for 
clients’ existing and future service needs.

  Translation Contact Network kick-off meeting

19

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR

2014

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR

2014

After  a  brief  outline  of  the  purpose  and 
modus  operandi  of  the  network  and  a 
presentation  of  the  Centre  as  it  stands 
today, the participants were provided with 
an  overview  of  the  two  core  business 
processes: 
translation 
‘Handling  of 
requests’ and ‘Handling of client feedback’. 
Both subjects gave rise to a lively round of 
questions and answers, touching upon key 
subjects, such as the Centre’s criteria for 
outsourcing,  its  quality  assurance  policy, 
how it manages to stick to deadlines and 
how it deals with conﬁ dential documents.

the  Centre’s 

The  programme  continued  with  a 
presentation  of 
future 
translation workﬂ ow management system 
e-CdT and its impact on the Client Portal, 
the  tool  used  by  clients  for  placing  their 
requests.  The  clients  were  invited  to 
volunteer for user tests to be conducted in 
2015 on new Client Portal functionalities. 
This will help ensure that the modiﬁ cations 
to  the  system  currently  being  developed 
by the Centre fully meet the performance 
requirements expected by clients.

The topic was followed by a presentation 
of  the  changes  to  the  Centre’s  pricing 
structure  and  service  offer  for  2015.  In 
particular,  the  technical  and  procedural 
speciﬁ cities  of  the  new  service  ‘video 
subtitling’ and the web upload function were 
discussed. This presentation was also an 

opportunity to inform clients about the new 
business development function set up by 
the Centre in September 2014, aimed at 
monitoring trends and innovations relating 
to the language services business (tools, 
working methods and new services) and 
to  analyse  how  the  Centre  can  help  its 
clients  meet  their  communication  needs 
in  an  increasingly  complex  multilingual 
environment.

The  ﬁ nal  part  of  the  afternoon  was 
devoted  to  good  practice  sharing. Three 
presentations were given:

translation  project, 

The  EMCDDA  shared  their  experience 
with  the  translation  of  the  Annual  Drug 
Report,  which  was  an  example  of  a 
from 
successful 
a  number  of  angles:  planning  and 
forecasting;  communication  with 
the 
Centre’s  Demand  Management  Section 
on the handling of the request; translation 
feedback  from  the  EMCDDA’s  National 
Focal  Points  (NFPs);  cooperation  with 
the  Centre’s  Client  Coordination  Team 
with respect to the handling of the NFPs’ 
comments,  and  the  supply  of  ﬁ nal  ﬁ les 
for  timely  publication  on  the  agency’s 
website.

EMA  presented  the  agency’s  approach 
to  planning  and  forecasting  translation 
work,  which  relies  on  an  annual  work 
plan/calendar  to  which  staff  members  in 

all  units  are  asked  to  contribute  as  part 
of their annual budget planning exercises 
and  quarterly  reviews.  EMA  also  has 
‘Translations  Microsite’ 
a  dedicated 
available  for  staff,  which  provides  useful 
information on how to submit a translation 
request.

the  Centre,  namely 

Finally, a representative from the Centre’s 
Terminology Coordination Team debriefed 
the  audience  on  the  ongoing  project 
the  Publications 
involving  EU-OSHA, 
Ofﬁ ce  and 
the 
integration  and  update  of  EU-OSHA’s 
safety and health terminology resource in 
IATE and its linkage with the Publications 
Ofﬁ ce’s EuroVoc database for publication 
as  a  specialised  microthesaurus  on  the 
EU  Open  Data  Portal  and  for  indexing 
documents and websites.

The  event  was  a  good  opportunity  for 
the  Centre’s  staff  to  get  to  know  their 
client  counterparts  with  whom  they  are 
in regular contact for clarifying questions 
arising  from  translation  requests.  The 
clients  in  turn  appreciated  the  fact  that 
they  could  share  their  experience  and 
discuss  certain  aspects  of  their  work, 
both with peers from other agencies and 
institutions  and  the  Centre’s  staff.  The 
aim of networking was thus fully met, and 
the Centre looks forward to repeating this 
experience in the coming years.

Translation Quality Assurance

STATUS OF IMPLEMENTATION OF THE 
TRANSLATION QUALITY ASSURANCE 
ACTION PLAN (TQAAP)
In  2014,  the  Centre  continued  to 
implement,  review  and  adjust 
the 
measures  set  out  in  the  Translation 
Quality  Assurance  Action  Plan 
(TQAAP)  for  2013  and  2014.  With 
92.64%  of  all  actions  and  measures 
implemented  at  the  end  of  2014,  the 
Centre  was  very  close  to  the  target 
of  full  implementation  set  in  the  work 
programme for 2014.

The  focus  was  placed  on  actions  aimed 
at  enhancing  and  ﬁ ne-tuning  the  quality 

20

Error rate by CTM
Error rate by language
combination
Error rate by segment

Q1
12.9%

5.0%

1.2%

Q2
11.1%

4.1%

1.0%

Q3
12.0%

4.6%

1.0%

Q4
8.1%

5.9%

1.1%

  Key indicators for ex-post checks on CTMs in 2014

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 
YEAR

+1 translations

-1 translations

15%

30%

70%

85%

Confirmed

Not confirmed

Confirmed

Not confirmed

Re-ranking Committee 2014:

  Total number of +1 translations (outsourced translations considered excellent) 
  Total number of -1 translations (outsourced translations considered below the required standard) 

of  products  and  services  offered  to  the 
Centre’s clients. 

review  of 

the  existing 

The 
revision 
process to optimise the workﬂ ow and the 
quality of the ﬁ nal product, which resulted 
in the conﬁ rmation of the existing revision 
model  with  targeted  improvements  until 
a  new  workﬂ ow  system  is  implemented, 
was  one  of  the  measures  addressed  by 
the TQAAP.

Improving the information ﬂ ow on closely-
related documents translated or revised by 
different translators was another measure 
imposed  by  the  increasing  number  of 
translation  projects  requested  by 
the 
Centre’s  clients.  These  projects  cover  a 
number of individual requests on the same 
subject. At times, such related documents 
have different delivery deadlines and are 
not  accompanied  by  speciﬁ c  instructions 
or information. An additional measure was 
therefore to raise clients’ awareness of the 
need  to  send  the  Centre  full  information 
and detailed instructions on such projects 
in  order  to  ensure  maximum  quality  and 
terminological  consistency  of 
related 
texts.

The process for the ex-post quality check 
(EPQC) of in-house translations was also 
audited, reviewed and updated. The main 
outcome  of  this  review  has  materialised 
in  an  increase  in  the  number  of  ex-post 
quality control exercises to four per year, 
i.e.  one  ex-post  quality  control  exercise 
per quarter.

Furthermore,  the  Centre  invested  in  the 
massive  alignment  of  a  large  volume  of 
documents  with  a  view  to  creating  high-
quality  translation  memories  which  will 
be  used  to  increase  consistency  among 
translated  texts  once  all  the  language 
teams  have  migrated  to  SDL  Trados 
Studio 201428. 

the  ex-post  quality  check  of 
Finally, 
trade  marks  was  also 
Community 
enhanced  with  the  systematic  update  of 
translation memories after the completion 
of  every  EPQC  exercise  and 
the 
systematic analysis of the errors identiﬁ ed 
during  these  exercises  with  a  view  to 
adopting 
the  appropriate  corrective 
measures, if necessary.

freelance 

The  quality  of 
translations 
continued to be measured on the basis of 
the quality-assurance activities performed 
by in-house translators. 

The Centre has implemented a dynamic re-
ranking system. According to this system, 
the  translations  assessed  as  ‘excellent’ 
or  as  ‘below  the  required  standard’  by 
in-house  translators  are  assessed  by 
a  second  translator  and  then  further 
examined  by  the  Centre’s  Re-ranking 
Committee,  which  conﬁ rms  or  rejects 
the in-house translator’s evaluation. If an 
evaluation is conﬁ rmed by this assessment 
the  external  contractor’s 
committee, 

28 For more information on the new CAT tool, see 
page 27.

ranking  may  be  changed  in  the  external 
contractors  list.  The  dynamic  re-ranking 
system is intended primarily to detect and 
correct  any  quality  issues.  A  structured 
assessment sheet is completed for each 
freelance  translation  job.  In  addition  to 
an  overall  assessment  of  the  translation 
quality  (+1  =  excellent,  0  =  standard  or 
-1  =  below  the  required  standard),  the 
assessment sheet contains information on 
the type of errors encountered. Whenever 
necessary, 
translators  send 
constructive feedback and/or the corrected 
translation  to  freelance  translators  via 
the  Demand  Management  Section. 
Repeated  translations  below  standard 
result  in  a  downgrading  in  the  external 
contractors list. Where the feedback and 
regular  assessment  do  not  lead  to  an 
improvement  in  quality,  the  Centre  has 
the possibility of terminating the contract.

in-house 

In  2014,  the  Re-ranking  Committee  held 
16 meetings at which less than 1% of the 
outsourced  translations  were  conﬁ rmed 
as  being  below  standard.  This  means 
that  more  than  99%  of  the  total  volume 
of 
translations  delivered  by  external 
contractors  was  of  good  quality,  which 
conﬁ rms the effectiveness of the dynamic 
re-ranking system used by the Centre for 
maintaining high quality standards.

Finally,  at  the  end  of  2014,  a  new 
Translation  Quality  Assurance  Action 
Plan  was  drawn  up  for  2015  and  2016, 
comprising  a  number  of  measures  to  be 
taken in order to continue providing high-
quality services to clients. The new set of 
measures  will  focus  on  the  beneﬁ ts  that 
can be drawn from the migration to SDL 
Trados  Studio  2014.  It  will  also  focus 
on  training  sessions  relating  to  the  new 
services offered by the Centre (e.g. video 
subtitling),  the  new  approaches  such  as 
machine translation post-editing, and the 
adaptation of speciﬁ c types of activities to 
the new workﬂ ow tools used at the Centre. 
The  creation  of  glossaries  compiled  in 
collaboration with the Centre’s clients and 
validated by them will also remain a core 
component of this action plan.

21

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR

2014

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR

2014

Very satisfied

Satisfied

Fairly satisfied

Not satisfied at all

%

2500

2000

1500

1000

500

0

3.91

98

361

704

252

2011

5.61

253

359

4.72

182

528

1373

968

177
2012

354

2013

  Spread of CSFs over the four satisfaction levels (per total of CSFs received)

3.82

254

439

1049

539

2014

HANDLING CLIENT FEEDBACK: CSF 
STATISTICS AND OUTCOME OF THE CSF 
BRAINSTORMING WORKSHOP
The  Centre  provides 
a  Client 
Satisfaction  Form  (CSF)  with  each 
document delivered to clients. In 2014, 
a total of 2 281 CSFs were returned by 
the  clients,  which  was  more  than  the 
peak ﬁ gure of 2012 (2 161 CSFs).

However,  the  overall  return  rate  of  3.8% 
was  lower  than  the  return  rate  of  2013 
(4.7%)  due  to  the  rise  in  the  number  of 
translated/edited  documents  compared 
with  the  previous  year.  The  table  above 
shows  the  evolution  of  the  CSF  return 
rate  over  the  past  four  years  (i.e.  since 
the  launch  of  the  online  form  on  the 
Client  Portal),  and  the  spread  over  the 
four  satisfaction  categories  which  can 
be  marked  on  the  form  (very  satisﬁ ed, 
satisﬁ ed, fairly satisﬁ ed and not satisﬁ ed 
at all).

individually  and 

In  line  with  the  ofﬁ cial  quality  assurance 
procedure, 
the  Centre  analysed  all 
the  necessary 
CSFs 
actions  were  taken  to  satisfy  the  clients’ 
requirements.  During 
the  quarterly 
follow-up  meetings,  19  quality 
CSF 
improvement  actions  were  deﬁ ned,  of 
which  53%  were  implemented  in  2014. 
Likewise, 85% of the actions carried over 
from the previous years were closed.

22

from  among 

In  a  brainstorming  workshop  held  in 
June  2014,  the  Centre’s  management 
and  representatives 
the 
translators and the IT Development Team 
reviewed  the  state  of  play  of  measuring 
and handling client satisfaction, analysed 
the  advantages  and  drawbacks  of  the 
current system and reﬂ ected on ways for 
moving forward.

The  current  system  for  measuring  client 
satisfaction via CSFs has advantages and 
drawbacks, in particular the following:

Advantages for clients:

  They  have  an  online 

for 
submitting  feedback  and  expressing 
their satisfaction.

tool 

  They can give secure access to CSFs 
to reviewers in their organisation and/
or in the Member States.

  The  Centre  provides  a  well-
established, 
‘after-
sales’ service, including the provision 
of fully revised translations.

free-of-charge 

  They/their  translation  reviewers  can 
learn  from  the  conclusions  returned 
by  the  Centre  following  analysis  of 
CSFs.

  They receive regular statistics via the 
annual  reporting  and  may  receive 
client-speciﬁ c statistics on demand.

  Regular feedback improves the quality 
of source and target documents.

Advantages for the Centre:

  There  is  a  clear,  well-established 

feedback handling workﬂ ow.

  Regular feedback improves the quality 
of source and target documents.

  All  parties  involved  in  the  translation 
workﬂ ow can learn from the feedback 
returned by the clients; improvement 
areas  can  be  identiﬁ ed  (terminology, 
formatting, request handling, workﬂ ow 
management, training, etc.).

  The 

ensures 
regular 
system 
monitoring  of 
translation  quality 
through  targeted  CSF  performance 
indicators.

  CSFs are a tool for evaluating both in-
house  and  freelance  translators  and 
for identifying the right translator for a 
given document/ﬁ eld.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 
YEAR

sometimes  not  as  efﬁ cient  as 
it 
should be: information may not reach 
all  persons  involved  in  the  process 
team  colleagues 
(e.g. 
or 
the  Centre’s 
side  /  translation  reviewers  on  the 
client’s  side),  and  this  may  lead  to 
repeating mistakes or inconsistencies. 

language 
freelancers  on 

At the workshop, participants split into four 
working groups, which discussed how to 
streamline  the  system  of  measuring  and 
handling  client  feedback  to  make  it  less 
time-consuming for all parties concerned; 
to  ensure  an  efﬁ cient  after-sales  service 
for  clients;  to  allow  the  Centre  to  draw 
meaningful  conclusions  on  the  quality  of 
its work; and to yield sustained quality of 
outputs for both clients and the Centre. 

the 

Following  a  discussion  of 
ideas 
presented  by  each  working  group,  a 
number  of  short-term  (2015)  and  long-
term  (2016  and  beyond)  actions  were 
agreed upon.

Drawbacks for both the Centre and 
clients:

Short term:

  It is a time-intensive procedure for all 

parties involved.

  Many  clients  do  not  see  the  added 
value of sending positive CSFs. They 
only  use  the  form  for  complaints 
and  then  consider  it  as  an  extra 
administrative  burden.  Therefore, 
the  CSF  response  rate  is  quite  low 
compared  to  the  volume  handled  by 
the  Centre,  and  a  reliable  judgment 
of the quality of work provided by the 
Centre is not possible.

  The  work 

translators  spend  on 
handling feedback does not currently 
show in their workload. 

translation 

  The  clients’ 
reviewers 
frequently  and  many  of 
change 
them  are  not  linguists  and  do  not 
know  what 
revision 
means. This may result in the Centre 
receiving unnecessary corrections or 
inconsistent  feedback.  Occasionally, 
comments are batted to and from. 

translation 

  Follow-up 

to  client 

feedback 

is 

  The  measurement 

of 

client 
satisfaction  will  be  dissociated 
from  the  handling  of  feedback:  the 
clients’  satisfaction  will  henceforth 
be measured on the basis of annual 
surveys  rather  than  CSF  statistics. 
The  CSF  statistics  will  be  broken 
down into the existing four categories 
and  presented  as  complementary 
information  to  the  survey  results. 
In  order  to  provide  a  fair  picture  of 
client  feedback  received,  no  further 
aggregated  ﬁ gures  on  ‘positive’  vs 
‘negative’ CSFs will be calculated.

  The  new 

for 

tool 

implemented  by 

tracking  staff 
unavailability 
the 
Centre at the end of 2014 will be used 
in  order  to  mark  translators  working 
on  client  feedback  as  unavailable 
so  that  the  Demand  Management 
Section  can  take  this  information 
into  consideration  when  assigning 
translation  jobs.  This  action  will  no 
longer  be  required  once  feedback 

  CSF brainstorming workshop

handling is integrated into the e-CdT 
workﬂ ow.

  The  actors 

the  speciﬁ cations 

in  handling 
involved 
client  feedback  at  the  Centre  will 
work  on 
for  a 
new  type  of  feedback  system  for 
clients  with  a  view  to  integrating  it 
into  the  Client  Portal  /  e-CdT.  As 
agreed  at  the  Translation  Contact 
Network  meeting29  held  with  clients 
on  2  December  2014,  the  External 
Communication 
Relations 
Section  will  consult  the  clients  on 
their  views  of  the  current  CSF  and 
any  future  developments  in  order 
to  develop  a  new  system  that  really 
meets their needs.

and 

the  outset, 

  In  order  to  avoid  negative  feedback 
the  Demand 
from 
Management  Section  will  implement 
an  early  warning  system  for  the 
Translation  Department  managers 
and  the  technical  team  upon  the 
reception of risk-prone requests, e.g. 
documents  with  complex  formatting; 
translation  projects;  sensitive 
key 
documents;  big  documents  or  series 
of  documents  that  are  related  and 
have  to  be  split  between  several 
translators  in  order  to  comply  with 

29 For further information on the Translation Contact 
Network meeting, see pages 19 and 20.

the  delivery  deadline.  This  will  allow 
them  to  inform  staff  accordingly  and 
provide  the  relevant  guidelines  and 
instructions. 

Long-term:

  The  new  client 
feedback  system 
fully 
developed 
integrated  into  the  Client  Portal  / 
e-CdT.

in  2015  will  be 

  The  Key  Performance 

Indicators 
(KPIs)  relating  to  client  feedback 
will  be  adjusted  to  reﬂ ect  the  new 
feedback handling system.

23

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR

2014

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR

2014

Surveys

STATUS OF IMPLEMENTATION OF THE 
ACTION PLAN 2014-2015 RESULTING 
FROM THE CLIENT SATISFACTION 
SURVEY 2013
In  2014,  in  addition  to  the  actions 
included  in  the  Translation  Quality 
Assurance  Action  Plan30,  the  Centre 
worked  on  the  implementation  of  the 
action  plan  deriving  from  the  general 
Client  Satisfaction  Survey 
2013 
covering the period 2014-2015. 

The  plan  comprises  four  action  groups 
(translation quality assurance; forecasting 
and pricing; invoices and statistics; Client 
Portal  improvements)  with  a  total  of  9 
sub-actions according to the improvement 
areas  highlighted  in  the  client  survey 
responses. 

By  the  end  of  the  year,  two  actions  had 
been closed, namely: 

  the  call  for  tenders  for  translation 
service providers in the ﬁ nancial ﬁ eld; 
and 

  the  organisation  of  speciﬁ c  training 
courses for translators in the ﬁ nancial 
and medical ﬁ elds;

Three actions were still ongoing at the end 
of the year:

  the 

integration  of  client  speciﬁ c 
glossaries  into  the  new  SDL  Trados 
Studio environment;

  options 

regard 

for  greater  ﬂ exibility 

in 
deadlines  and  prices,  in  particular 
with 
to  speciﬁ c  projects 
(NB: reduced prices for clients came 
into effect in January and July 2014); 
and

had migrated to the new tool;

  a number of pre-processing activities 
that were also linked to the new SDL 
Trados Studio;

  the review of the publication structure 
of invoices and statistics on the Client 
Portal; and

  the  adaption  of 

the 
template  available  on 
Portal.

forecasting 
the  Client 

The targeted implementation rate of 50% 
for 2014 was therefore not reached. This 
is, however, no reason for concern as most 
of the pending actions will be resolved with 
the full roll-out of the new CAT tool31 and 
the  new  workﬂ ow  management  system 
e-CdT32,  with  updated  functionalities  for 
the Client Portal.

FOLLOW-UP SURVEY TO CLIENT 
SATISFACTION SURVEY 2013
At the CSF brainstorming workshop in 
June 2014, a decision had been taken 
that  the  Centre  would  approach  its 
clients once again in the year following 
each general client satisfaction survey 
to  request  their  assessment  of  the 
Centre’s overall performance. 

Therefore, in 2014 clients were asked to 
express their satisfaction with the balance 

between  the  ‘overall  quality  of  service  – 
including  quality  of  translations,  client 
relations  and  information  policy  –  and 
price’  in  order  for  the  Centre  to  be  able 
to provide a reliable ﬁ gure for the general 
client  satisfaction 
index.  The  survey 
had  a  response  rate  of  36%  (19  replies) 
compared with 41.5% in 2013.  

Since the last time that clients were asked 
to  express  their  satisfaction  with  the 
overall  quality  of  the  Centre’s  services 
compared  to  prices  in  2013,  the  level  of 
satisfaction  has  considerably  increased. 
Four respondents out of 19 marked ‘very 
satisﬁ ed’,  and  the  percentage  of  those 
who  said  that  they  were  ‘fairly  satisﬁ ed’ 
(73%) also doubled compared with 2013 
(36%).

Only  5%  of  respondents  said  that  they 
were  ‘slightly  dissatisﬁ ed’.  This  time,  no 
client  marked  ‘very  dissatisﬁ ed’  with  the 
Centre’s  quality  of  service  in  relation  to 
price. The  survey  thus  yielded  a  general 
client  satisfaction  index  of  95%,  taking 
together  the  answers  for  ‘very  satisﬁ ed’ 
and ‘fairly satisﬁ ed’.

Based  on  the  results  of  this  survey  and 
the  particular  comments  made  by  the 
clients,  the  Centre  considers  that  the 

2013

5%

0%

2014

5%

0%

0%

36%

14%

45%

22%

  Client Portal improvements based on 
speciﬁ c client feedback received.

Four actions remained open, namely:

  the use of particular quality assurance 
features  in  the  new  SDL  Trados 
Studio, since not all language teams 

Very satisfied

Fairly satisfied

Slightly dissatisfied

Very dissatisfied

Do no know/this is not relevant to my work

73%

  Findings of the follow-up survey to the general Client Satisfaction Survey 2013  

30 For further information on this Action Plan, see pages 
20 and 21.

31 See ‘New CAT tool’ on page 27.

32 For further information on e-CdT, see pages 26 and 27.

24

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 
YEAR

2014-2015 Action Plan resulting from the 
general  Client  Satisfaction  Survey  2013 
and  the  newly  established  Translation 
Quality Assurance Action Plan 2015-2016 
are appropriate insofar as the suggestions 
expressed  this  year  by  the  clients  are 
covered by the actions included in these 
plans.

CLIENT SURVEY ON BUSINESS 
CONTINUITY NEEDS
One  of  the  Centre’s  main  priorities  is 
to  ensure  service  continuity  for  clients 
at  all  times,  including  in  the  case  of  any 
serious business disruption. Following its 
move to the Drosbach building, the Centre 
undertook a major update of its Business 
Continuity Plan (BCP). In this context, in 
June 2014, it conducted a survey among 
51  clients33  to  gather  information  on  the 
Maximum  Tolerable  Period  of  Disruption 
(MTPD)34  that  they  would  be  prepared 
to  accept  for  language  services.  In  total, 
24  replies  were  received,  a  response 
rate of 47%. The replies allow the Centre 
to  assess  the  clients’  MTPD  choices 
(ranging  from  four  hours  to  one  month) 
per output type (e.g. general publications, 
reports,  administrative  documents,  press 
releases  and  website  translations)  and 
to  identify  the  resources  required  for 
ensuring the timely, smooth and effective 
recovery of critical processes. One action 
started  based  on  the  survey  results  was 
the  update  of  the  BCP  communication 
targeting  both  stakeholders 
templates 
and 
freelance 
(clients, 
institutions)  and  staff  in  order  to  be  able 
to react quickly and adequately to a crisis 
situation.

translators 

SURVEY ON THE EU AGENCIES’ 
APPROACHES TO MULTILINGUALISM
In  April  and  May  2014,  the  Centre’s 
External  Relations  and  Communication 

33 The survey was not sent to the European Institutions, 
with the exception of DG-EMPL, as they have their own 
translation services.

34 Maximum Tolerable Period of Disruption (MTPD) is 
the timeframe during which a recovery must become 
effective before an outage compromises the ability of 
the organisation to achieve its business objectives and, 
therefore, potentially threaten its short or long-term 
survival.

Is your Agency’s website multilingual?

Yes
47%

*
No 
53%

*it is in English only, with a dedicated section/page for publications in other EU / non-EU languages

  Question from the survey on the EU agencies’ approaches to multilingualism 

Section  followed  up  one  of  the  actions 
included in the work programme approved 
by the members of the agencies’ Heads of 
Communication and Information Network 
(HCIN)  at  their  meeting  in  Vienna  in 
January  2014  by  conducting  a  survey 
to 
the  EU  agencies’  approaches 
on 
multilingualism.  The  survey  enabled  the 
HCIN  to  take  stock  of  how  EU  agencies 
currently  deal  with  multilingualism  and 
to  formulate  recommendations  for  the 
Heads  of  Agencies  on  how  to  move 
forward on this subject which is included 
in the European Commission’s ‘Roadmap 
for EU Agencies’35. 

An  online  questionnaire  of  14  questions 
was sent to the Heads of Communication 
and  Information  of  37  EU  agencies.  A 
total of 19 replies were received, giving a 
response rate of 51.4%.

The main conclusions of the survey were:

  On the whole, the agencies consider 
multilingualism  as  an  essential 
tool  for  communicating  with  their 
stakeholders  and 
their 
mission. There is wide variation in the 
current approaches to multilingualism 
as  each  agency  has  different  target 

fulﬁ lling 

35 ‘Roadmap on the follow-up to the Common Approach 
on EU decentralised agencies’ 
(http://europa.eu/agencies/documents/2012-12-18_
roadmap_on_the_follow_up_to_the_common_approach_
on_eu_decentralised_agencies_en.pdf), in particular 
point 24 which stipulates: ‘Make websites as multilingual 
as possible and ensure they provide information 
necessary for (ﬁ nancial) transparency’.

audiences, stakeholder demands and 
varying budgets and scale – so there 
can be no ‘one size ﬁ ts all’ language 
policy. 

  In  total,  37%  of  respondents  stated 
they  did  not  have  an  approved 
multilingual policy plan in place. 

communication 
/  scientiﬁ c  conclusions 

  As regards the languages requested 
by  type  of  output  (legal  documents, 
strategic/administrative  documents; 
general and subject related marketing 
material; 
and 
reports 
/ 
opinions / assessments in the agency-
speciﬁ c  domain  /  handbooks  and 
guidance  documents;  summaries  or 
résumés thereof; databases  / software 
applications  /  interfaces  /  interactive 
tools, such as terminology databases; 
application 
portals; 
or 
registration 
lists  of  goods 
the  majority  of 
and  services), 
respondents selected more than one 
option, 
languages’, 
‘all  languages’  and  ‘decided  case–
bycase’,  which  were  selected  most 
frequently.

including 

forms; 

online 

‘0-5 

  The  translation  of  documents  into 
‘non-EU languages’ is only requested 
by  a  small  minority  of  agencies  and 
depends  very  much  on  the  output 
type. 

  A 

total  of  47%  of 

respondents 
conﬁ rmed that they had a multilingual 
website. 

  There were many different responses 

25

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR

2014

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR

2014

about  the  website  content  that  is 
translated,  but  in  most  cases,  it  is 
the  content  of  ‘second-level  pages’ 
(a  page  located  directly  below  the 
homepage  in  the  website  structure, 
typically 
the 
homepage  with  one  click)  that  is 
translated.

accessible 

from 

  In  response  to  the  question  about 
how  many  languages  their  website 
was translated into, an equal number 
of  respondents  answered  ‘into  all 
languages’ and ‘0-5 languages’.

  Only two respondents stated that they 
had  all  website  content  translated, 
and  only  one  stated  that  his  agency 
also  translated  the  content  of  ‘social 
media pages’.

  A large majority of respondents (74%) 
check the quality of translations. Half 
said  that  checking  was  done  by  the 
‘National  Competent  Authorities/
Focal Points’. 

  Overall,  budget  expenditures  and 
for 

resources  available 

human 

layout  work,  editing,  translation  and 
management  and  hosting  of 
the 
website vary greatly from one agency 
to the next.

  Regarding 

the  development  of 
multilingual needs/policies, there is a 
diverse spectrum ranging from those 
who  already  have  a  clear  picture  of 
where they wish to go and those who 
are  in  the  startup  phase  of  deﬁ ning 
their  strategy.  Budget  constraints 
appear to make it difﬁ cult for agencies 
to make concrete predictions.

On  the  basis  of  the  report  summarising 
the results and conclusions of the survey 
and  the  discussions  held  at  the  HCIN 
meeting  in  Vienna  on  6/7  October  2014, 
the  following  recommendations  were  put 
forward to the Heads of Agencies:

  The need for adequate ﬁ nancial and 

human resources.

  All agencies should have an approved 
multilingual practice, which is publicly 
available online in all languages.

  The multilingual practice should take 
account of the points included in the 
Chapter  on  ‘Translation  practice  / 
Multilingualism’ of the ‘Communication 
Handbook for EU Agencies’.

  As  a  minimum,  all  agencies  should 
have a section or document on their 
website that provides basic information 
about the agency in all the ofﬁ cial EU 
languages. This does not necessarily 
need  to  be  a  multilingual  homepage 
–  it  could  simply  be  a  factsheet 
with  translations.  Nevertheless,  EU 
agencies  should  continue  to  strive 
to make their websites available in a 
wider number of EU languages. 

The  Heads  of  Agencies  endorsed  these 
in 
recommendations  at 
October, and the HCIN Work Programme 
for 2015 includes actions to ensure their 
implementation.

their  meeting 

Workflow optimisation and innovation

CLIENT PORTAL

Main ﬁ gures

In its fourth year of operation, the Centre’s 
Client  Portal  recorded  11  259  orders. 
59  779  individual  jobs  were  delivered 
through the Portal. By the end of the year, 
the number of registered users had risen 
to 1 059. As in past years, the Centre’s IT 
Service  Desk  provided  regular  functional 
and 
the  users. 
105  support  requests  were  processed 
by the team.

technical  support 

to 

New releases

Client  Portal  improvements  are  regularly 
reviewed  by  the  Centre’s  IT  Steering 
Committee  in  line  with  the  overall  IT 
project  plan.  Two  major  releases  were 
implemented in 2014 relating to changes 
in  the  Centre’s  pricing  policy  adopted  by 
the Management Board.

26

Throughout the year, the IT Development 
Team  worked  on  Client  Portal  updates 
deriving  from  the  e-CdT36  project  and 
impacting  in  particular  on  the  request 
module. As presented and agreed at the 
Translation  Contact  Network  meeting37, 
a  number  of  clients  will  be  involved 
in  the  acceptance  testing  of  the  new 
functionalities  before  the  new  system 
release is gradually rolled out to clients in 
2015.

DESIGNING A NEW TRANSLATION 
WORKFLOW MANAGEMENT SYSTEM 
(E-CDT) 
At the beginning of 2014, the Centre’s IT 
Steering Committee had set an extremely 
ambitious goal for the release of the ﬁ rst 
version  of  e-CdT:  1  quarter  2015.  This 
meant that developments had to be fast, 

36 For further information on e-CdT, see below.

37 For further information on the Translation Contact 
Network meeting, see pages 19 and 20.

precise and spot-on from the start. It also 
meant  that  the  initial  scope  foreseen  for 
version 1 of e-CdT had to be readjusted 
to  cover  primarily  the  main  workﬂ ow 
management  functionalities  needed  for 
the  work  of  the  Demand  Management 
Section.  The  developments,  organised 
in  instalments  according  to  the  Agile 
methodology,  advanced  at  a  sustained 
pace.  By  the  end  of  the  year,  the  date 
for  the  deployment  of  the  ﬁ rst  version 
of  e-CdT  was  ﬁ xed  for  May  2015,  with 
developments  continuing  after  this  date 
and  monthly  releases  adding 
the 
existing  functionalities  to  gradually  reach 
the full initial scope of the e-CdT project.

to 

Greatest care is of the utmost importance 
when  developing  a  system  that  touches 
upon  an  organisation’s  core  activity. The 
organisational  aspects  –  as  well  as  the 
ramiﬁ cations  extending  to  all  supporting 
systems  and  tools  –  are  manifold,  and 
required 
investment 
considerable 

is 

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 
YEAR

  e-CdT Requests screen

in  terms  of  time  and  resources  on  the 
part  of  both  developers  and  operational 
personnel,  who  have 
continue 
managing their daily work ‘on the side’.

to 

improvements 

The e-CdT project will result in a number 
of  novelties  and 
that 
should  provide  gains  in  efﬁ ciency,  some 
of them to be integrated immediately and 
some  at  a  later,  post-deployment  stage. 
The  change 
in  philosophy  concerns 
mainly the way in which clients introduce 
their  requests  and  how  the  workﬂ ow 
administrators and language and technical 
support  staff  manage  the  requests  and 
ﬁ les in the various stages of the process. 
Whenever possible, manual interventions 
not requiring human decision-making will 
be replaced by automatic system choices 
triggered  by  the  previous  action.  The 
use  of  email  messages  will  largely  be 
abandoned as a means of communication 
between the Centre and its stakeholders 
in the workﬂ ow process. There will also be 
changes for the Centre’s translators, both 
in-house  and  freelance.  Another  crucial 
point to be constantly taken into account 
is  the  interoperability  with  other  systems 
and tools. 

A  translation  workﬂ ow  system  is  at  best 
hooked  up  to  state-of-the-art  translation 
tools, but also needs to be linked to and 
communicate  with  staff  and  contract 
management  systems,  availability  and 

etc. 

Therefore, 

workload  modules,  ﬁ nancial  transaction 
applications, 
all 
surrounding  systems  have  evolved  to 
take into account the changes e-CdT will 
bring. The  gradual  deployment  of  e-CdT 
in  2015,  both  in-house  and  vis-à-vis  the 
Centre’s clients, should make it possible 
to  avoid  any  disruption  in  operations, 
while slowly phasing out components as 
they grow obsolete or redundant.

interinstitutional  call 

 NEW CAT TOOL
In 2014, the Centre started installing the 
translation memory software SDL Trados 
Studio  2014  that  had  been  selected 
for 
following  an 
tenders.  The  tool  replaces  the  software 
‘Translator’s  Workbench’  (TWB)  which 
has been used by the Centre since 1997. 
Although SDL Studio 2014 is an ‘offshoot’ 
of TWB, the migration proved to be more 
than just a technical update.

Translation  memory  software  is  one  of 
the most important technologies used by 
translators,  as  it  allows  the  creation  and 
management  of  databases  of  previously 
translated  material.  Translators  can 
easily  access  and  reuse  this  corpus, 
avoiding  repetitive  work  and  building  on 
consistency and coherence.

SDL Studio brings a number of profound 
changes  for  the  Centre’s  linguistic  and 
support  staff:  a  new  user  interface,  the 

separation  of  the  content  of  a  document 
from  the  formatting  information  and  new 
quality  assurance  features  that  can  help 
consistency, 
maintain 
among  other  things.  Several  services 
collaborated  in  preparing  the  migration 
to this tool, integrating it into the workﬂ ow 
and training end users.

terminological 

The  migration  to  SDL  Studio  2014  was 
also a welcome occasion to question the 
use of this technology in general, the great 
challenge  being  that  the  vast  majority  of 
translation work is outsourced. Maintaining 
reliable  and  useful  translation  memories 
is only possible if contractors are properly 
involved. Working for both translation and 
revision with bilingual and – ideally – pre-
translated  documents  should  reduce  the 
need for time-consuming alignments and 
ensure  that  only  ﬁ nalised  and  validated 
texts are stored in the central translation 
memories.

the  correction  of 

The Estonian language team was the ﬁ rst 
to use SDL Studio as from July 2014. The 
experience  conﬁ rmed  the  tool’s  potential 
to  reduce  repetitive  work  and  limit  the 
workload  in  the  post-production  phase, 
in  particular 
layout 
problems. It also showed that placing the 
focus  on  the  technical  pre-processing 
of  ﬁ les  to  avoid  issues  with  documents 
cropping up in the course of the workﬂ ow 
was  the  right  approach.  The  experience 
gained  from  the  preparation  of  the  ﬁ les 
for  the  Estonian  team  highlighted  the 
need  for  an  IT  tool  to  automate  several 
pre-, mid- and post-processing tasks that 
were  performed  manually  and  required 
substantial  resources,  and  increased  the 
risk of errors.

In  order  to  fully  integrate  the  technology 
in 
the  workﬂ ow  without  creating  a 
disproportionate  workload  for  the  team 
preparing  translation  work,  the  Centre 
the  possibilities 
started 
into 
of 
tool, 
WorldServer,  in  the  last  quarter  of  2014. 
Among  other  things,  WorldServer  allows 
translation  memories  to  be  managed 
centrally  and  some  preparatory  steps 

looking 
implementing  a 

further  SDL 

27

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR

2014

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR 2014

2014

in  the  workﬂ ow  to  be  automated.  It  also 
includes an online translation environment 
that could be made available to translators, 
both in-house and freelance.

A  set  of  semi-automatic  pre-,  mid-  and 
post-processing  tools  was  developed  at 
the end of the year, allowing for a further 
smooth  and  gradual  transition  to  SDL 
Studio for all the other in-house translation 
teams as from January 2015.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 
YEAR

PART III.     

THE TRANSLATION CENTRE’S SECOND MISSION: INTERINSTITUTIONAL COOPERATION 

As in past years, the Centre attended the meetings of the Interinstitutional Committee for 
Translation and Interpretation (ICTI) and actively participated in interinstitutional working 
groups, networks and cooperation projects on a wide variety of topics: IATE, terminology, 
interinstitutional  Euramis/CAT 
translation,  quality  control, 
outsourcing  translation  work,  language  and  thematic  expertise,  Language  Technology 
Watch  (LTW),  awareness  raising,  KIAPIs38,  ﬁ nances  and  human  resources.  The  most 
relevant achievements are summarised below:

issues,  machine 

tool 

38 KIAPIs – Key Interinstitutional Activity and Performance Indicators.

 INTER-ACTIVE TERMINOLOGY FOR EUROPE 
(IATE)

All  IATE  documents 
the 
deﬁ ned  within 
mandate of the IATE 
Management  Group 
(IMG),  chaired  by 
the  Centre,  were 
the 
approved  by 
respective  interinstitutional  committees:  the 
mid-term  activity  report,  the  2014  Annual 
Activity Report, the mid-term budget execution 
report and the work programme for 2015. 

The  main  achievements  for  2014  included  a 
revision  of  the  IATE  scorecard  that  provides 
indicators  on  the  usage  and  content  of  IATE. 
The IMG introduced a number of quality-related 
indicators to complement the existing  ﬁ gures, 
which  had  been  mainly  quantitative.  The 
public  version  of  this  terminological  database 
received  over  45  million  queries  in  2014, 
reversing the slight downward trend which had 
been observed over the last two years.

The use of IATE terminology for the automatic 
terminology  recognition  feature  of  the  new 
interinstitutional  translation  memory  tool,  SDL 
Trados Studio, continued in 2014, as well as the 
creation of ﬂ exible export functionalities. These 
export  functionalities  allow  the  terminologists 

institutions 

the  various  participating 

in 
to 
create  subsets  of  the  term  base  which  can 
be  used  directly  by  the  translators  to  ensure 
terminological  consistency  when  working  with 
their CAT tool.

In line with the new copyright notice for IATE, 
which  was  approved  in  December  2013,  a 
new  page,  ‘Download  IATE’  was  added  to 
the  IATE  Public  site  in  July  2014.  The  page 
provides  an  extract  of  IATE  terminology  in  a 
single ZIP archive containing around 8 million 
terms in 25 languages (all EU languages and 
Latin).  It  is  provided  in  TermBase  eXchange 
(TBX)  format.  The  new  page  also  provides 
information  on  the  data  made  available  for 
download (content, structure, format), i.e. data 
that is either not copyright protected or which is 
the intellectual work of EU staff. Nearly 8 000 
users downloaded the data; which can be used 
for commercial and non-commercial purposes. 
The  IATE  support  team  also  created  an 
additional tool to make it possible for users to 
ﬁ lter the resulting data according to a number of 
criteria such as domains and languages, etc.).

28

29

 
HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR

2014

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR

2014

INTERINSTITUTIONAL TERMINOLOGY 
PORTAL – EUR-TERM
EurTerm, the Interinstitutional Terminology 
Portal  of  the  European  Institutions,  is 
an  interinstitutional  space  of  the  IATE 
Management  Group  for  communication 
and sharing of terminology resources.

The website offers language wikis where 
translators  can  discuss 
terminology-
related matters, consult the most current 
version  of  IATE  Term,  view  terminologist 
and expert contact details, a calendar for 
all  institutional  and  external  terminology 
events, and a vast collection of institutional 
and  external  resources,  such  as  links  to 
terminology-focused  websites,  online 
training,  databases  and  more.  EurTerm 
also  contains  videos,  e-books  and  news 
on terminology from around the world.

Currently  the  Portal  is  only  available 
through the ECAS authentication platform 
(to EU institutions and some agency staff 
members).

A  special  Term  session  for  the  Centre’s 
terminology  coordinators  was  held  in 
July 2014 to encourage them to contribute 
to  the  language  wikis  and  consult  the 
Portal on a regular basis. 

terminology  workﬂ ow  and 

TERMINOLOGY AWAY-DAY
The Centre organised its ﬁ rst Terminology 
Away-Day  on  29  September  2014,  for 
its 
the 
terminology  coordinators  and 
Terminology  Coordination  Team.  The 
aim  was  to  brainstorm  on  the  Centre’s 
current 
to 
discuss  improvements  and  strategies  for 
the future in a more informal atmosphere. 
It  was  also  an  opportunity  to  emphasise 
the  importance  of  terminology  in  the 
translation  process  as  a  means  of 
increasing  the  quality  and  consistency 
of  translations  and  to  speed  up  the 
translation and revision stages.

Two  guest  speakers  from  the  European 
Directorate-General 
Commission’s 
the 
for  Translation  (DGT)  presented 
Commission  approach 
terminology 
work.  The  Commission  representatives 
learn  how 
also  had 

the  chance 

to 

to 

30

terminology is managed at the Centre, the 
resources  allocated  to  terminology  work 
and the main challenges faced.

terminology 

A  workshop  was  held  on  four  current 
topics: 
in  SDL  Studio, 
proactive  terminology  versus  remedial 
terminology, authoritative references (EU 
vs  national),  and  analysis  of  the  current 
terminology  workﬂ ow 
the 
Centre’s future terminology framework.

in  view  of 

The event proved to be an excellent forum 
for  fostering  team-building  and  further 
strengthening  the  cooperation  between 
terminology  coordinators 
the  Centre’s 
and  the  Terminology  Coordination  Team 
as  well  as  with  the  staff  from  DGT.  The 
participants gave very positive feedback, 
and all were in favour of holding another 
Away-Day in 2015.

INTERINSTITUTIONAL MEETINGS OF 
TERMINOLOGISTS

French terminologists

In  March,  the  Centre  was  represented 
at  an 
interinstitutional  meeting  of 
French  terminologists  at  the  European 
participating 
Each 
Commission. 
organisation 
(Commission,  Council, 
Parliament,  Court  of Auditors,  European 
Economic 
and  Social  Committee, 
Committee  of  the  Regions,  European 
Investment  Bank,  European  Space 
Agency and some Belgian organisations) 
presented its activities in the terminology 
ﬁ eld.  An  intense  brainstorming  session 
enabled 
to  draft 
the  participants 
instructions for the presentation of French 
entries  in  IATE.  These  were  integrated 
into  the  language-speciﬁ c  French  annex 
to the IATE Handbook.

Irish terminologists

the  Centre  attended 

In  March, 
the 
16th interinstitutional meeting on support 
for Irish terminology, held at the Council 
in  Brussels.  The  meeting 
focused 
on  the  Irish  terminology  project,  an 
initiative  between  the  interdisciplinary 
school  Fiontar  at  Dublin  City  University 

in 

terminologists  working 

and 
the 
EU  institutions,  which  has  been  ongoing 
since  2007.  The  main  objective  of  the 
project  is  the  development  of  the  Irish 
terms  in  the  IATE  database.  The  Irish 
terminologists also discussed the draft for 
the  language-speciﬁ c  Irish  annex  to  the 
IATE handbook.

Croatian terminologists

In  May,  the  Centre  participated  in  an 
interinstitutional  meeting  of  Croatian 
terminologists  organised  by  the  Council 
than  50  Croatian 
in  Brussels.  More 
terminologists 
institutions 
from 
gathered  for  the  third  time  to  discuss 
open 
improve 
interinstitutional  communication  between 
Croatian translators. 

issues  and  ways 

all 

to 

last  year  by 
Institute 

The  ﬁ rst  day  was  dedicated  to  the  new, 
uniﬁ ed  orthography  and  grammar  guide 
published 
the  Croatian 
National 
for  Language  and 
Linguistics.  The  second  day  consisted 
in  interesting  presentations  of  Croatian 
units  in  the  institutions.  Representatives 
of 
the 
Croatian  Foreign  Ministry 
in  Zagreb 
provided  valuable  information  regarding 
communication with national specialists in 
different ﬁ elds.

the  national 

focal  point 

from 

English terminologists

In October, the Centre hosted the annual 
meeting  of  English  terminologists.  10 
staff from the European Commission, the 
Parliament, the Council and the European 
Economic and Social Committee took part 
in the meeting. The Centre’s terminologists 
described how terminology was managed 
in-house  and  presented  IATE  updates 

  Meeting of English terminologists

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 
YEAR

provided a great opportunity for observing 
new trends in the language business. 

  Terminology Away-Day
and  current  developments.  In  a  round-
table  discussion,  the  participants  brieﬂ y 
described their work and focused on the 
challenges they faced. Topics such as the 
validation  process  in  IATE,  the  retaining 
and  sharing  of  old  project  information, 
training, the IATE user proﬁ le, and the use 
of Wikipedia were discussed. 

Dutch and Flemish linguists

from 

Flemish 

the  Council, 

In  October,  the  Centre  attended  the 
of  Dutch 
interinstitutional  meeting 
and 
coordinators, 
quality 
terminologists  and  heads  of  translation 
units organised by the Council in Brussels. 
60  delegates 
the 
Commission, the Parliament, the Court of 
Justice, the Court of Auditors, the European 
Central  Bank,  the  European  Economic 
and  Social  Committee,  the  Committee 
of  the  Regions,  the  Publications  Ofﬁ ce, 
the  Centre  and  external  guests  from  the 
Nederlandse  Taalunie  and  Dutch  and 
Flemish  Universities  (Maastricht,  Ghent, 
Antwerp,  Leuven,  Brussels,  Nijmegen, 
Utrecht  and  Amsterdam)  took  part  in 
the  very  interesting  exchange  of  views 
surrounding the translation business.

MACHINE TRANSLATION
Following  the  experiment  carried  out  at 
the  end  of  2013  with  the  Commission’s 
translation  system, 
MT@EC  machine 
further tests were done with a tool made 
available  by  SDL.  As  the  results  were 
considered as satisfactory by the in-house 
translators, the Centre decided to include 
machine  translation  in  its  new  strategy 
and  set  various  objectives  to  build  on 
this  technology  to  make  it  available  to 

translators,  as  an  additional  computer-
assisted translation tool, and to clients at 
a later stage (once the ways of making it 
ﬁ t for purpose have been deﬁ ned). 

TECHNOLOGY WATCH AS A TOOL FOR 
INNOVATION

in 

part 

(i2LTW)  network  which 

The  Centre 
the 
takes 
interinstitutional  Language  Technology 
Watch 
is 
mandated by the Coordination Committee 
on Translation  (CCT)  to  pool  information 
on  available 
technologies 
language 
collected  by  partner  EU  institutions;  to 
forecast technologies likely to be used in 
areas  of  interest  to  the  ICTI  institutions; 
and to disseminate the information to the 
appropriate levels of the ICTI institutions, 
to allow them to efﬁ ciently and effectively 
meet  the  challenges  of  translation  and 
multilingual communication resulting from 
global technological changes in the area 
of language applications.

2014 was largely devoted to discussions 
the 
about  SDL  Trados  Studio  2014, 
new  CAT 
following  an 
tool  chosen 
interinstitutional  call  for  tenders,  and  an 
interinstitutional  survey  on  CATE  tools 
(Computer-Assisted  Translation  Environ-
ments).

As machine translation is more than a ‘nice-
to-have’  additional  tool  in  the  translation 
business, further tests were run (different 
language  pairs,  ﬁ elds  and  document 
types)  which  led  to  satisfactory  results, 
translation 
according 
team which tested this tool in combination 
with  SDL  Studio.  In  this  connection, 
the  Centre  organised  a  presentation  of 
the  Bing  Translator  in  July  2014,  which 

the  Estonian 

to 

the 

Language 

and 
Furthermore, 
Technology  Support  Section  traditionally 
combs the language technologies market 
to  identify,  test  and  –  if  necessary  – 
integrate  state-of-the-art  tools  which  are 
mature enough to be used in association 
with 
the 
the  Centre’s  applications, 
ultimate  aim  being  to  enhance  efﬁ ciency 
and turnaround times. Thanks to various 
contacts, PDF converters, other CAT tools 
offering  unique  features  and  terminology 
tools  could  be  tested  and  the  results  of 
several  automated  speech  recognition 
tools  and 
text-to-speech  applications 
compared.  Tests  were  also  carried  out 
to  what  extent  speech 
to  determine 
recognition  could  be  integrated  with  the 
subtitling  software  tested  by  the  Centre 
to add subtitling to the range of language 
services offered to clients.

interinstitutional  activities 

in 
As  well  as  active  participation 
IAMLAPD39  events 
JIAMCATT  and 
(i2LTW 
and 
and  various  working  groups,  including 
the  Centre 
EuraCat  and 
IIUGMT), 
follows 
developments 
and  innovation  in  the  translation  and 
language  technologies  ﬁ elds  through  its 
participation  in  the  ‘Translating  and  the 
Computer Conference’, at which a Centre 
representative  acted  as  a  panellist  in 
November 2014.

technological 

INTERINSTITUTIONAL EXCHANGE 
PROGRAMME

In  the  framework  of  the  interinstitutional 
staff  exchange  programme,  a  member 
of  the  Centre’s  Polish  team  spent  two 
months  with  the  Polish  translators  of 
the  European  Parliament’s  DG  TRAD. 
In  exchange,  a  Polish  translator  from 
DG  TRAD  joined  the  Centre’s  Polish 
team  for  two  months.  This  exchange 
allowed both sides to benchmark working 
methods, share useful reference material 
and terminology resources and learn from 
each other’s professional experience.

39 For further information on IAMLADP and JIAMCATT, 
see page 32.

31

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR

2014

EUROPE DAY

IAMLADP

JIAMCATT

the  Joint 

this  meeting 

In  April,  the  Centre  was  represented 
at  JIAMCATT  2014, 
Inter-
Agency  Meeting  on  Computer-Assisted 
Translation  and  Terminology,  which  was 
held in Strasbourg (France). Given that its 
membership  includes  UN  organisations, 
EU institutions and many other prominent 
international  bodies, 
is 
a  privileged 
face-to-face  exchange 
where  experience,  issues,  solutions  and 
resources  can  be  shared,  thus  allowing 
for  networking  and  cooperation  in  the 
language  and 
technical  ﬁ elds.  Two 
major  trends  emerged  at  this  meeting: 
1)  the  need  to  rethink  work  organisation 
and  redesign  translation  workﬂ ows  as 
a  consequence  of  the  implementation 
of  cutting-edge 
technologies,  and  2) 
the  willingness  to  share  resources  with 
external language service providers.

IAM

LADP

and 

In  June  2014,  the  International  Annual 
Meeting  on  Language  Arrangements, 
Documentation 
Publication 
(IAMLADP) was hosted by the European 
Institutions 
in  Brussels.  The  Centre 
attended the event, together with over 120 
participants from 62 different international 
organisations  (United  Nations,  European 
Union, World Bank, International Monetary 
Fund,  Organization 
for  Economic 
Cooperation and Development, etc.).

for 
life-long 

The  Host  paper,  prepared  by 
the 
Director  of  the  European  Commission’s 
Interpretation, 
Directorate-General 
was  dedicated 
learning. 
to 
Other topics were discussed, such as the 
new  types  of  language  services  which 
translation services are regularly required 
to  provide,  the  obstacles  relating  to  the 
introduction  of  machine  translation  (MT), 
and the budgeting of services.

At  the  end  of  the  meeting,  a  statement 
was communicated to the press in which 
IAMLADP  member  organisations 
the 
their  governing 
‘1) 
collectively  urged 
bodies to ensure the necessary budgetary 
resources for effective awareness-raising 
and  on-going  professional  dialogue  with 
lifelong 
universities,  and  appropriate 
learning  possibilities  […],  and  2)  the 
national  authorities 
the 
teaching  of  languages  throughout  the 
education  system,  as  well  as  speciﬁ c 
university 
translators  and 
training  of 
interpreters at Masters level […]’.

to  promote 

the 

the 

(ARN),  and 

commemorate 

To 
Schuman 
Declaration  of  9  May  1950,  a  ‘European 
village’  was  open  to  the  public  in  the 
centre  of  Luxembourg  city  on  Saturday 
10  May.  The  event  was  coordinated  by 
the  interinstitutional  Awareness  Raising 
translation 
Network 
services  of  the  European  institutions, 
including the Centre, shared a joint stand 
with the slogan ‘Übersetzen für Europa – 
Traduire  pour  l’Europe  –  Translating  for 
Europe’.  Information  on  multilingualism 
in  the  European  Union,  the  translation 
services  of  the  European  institutions, 
recruitment procedures, etc. was available 
at  the  stand.  There  were  also  language 
quizzes for families and children.

32

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR 2014

2014

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 
YEAR

PART IV.     

OTHER EXTERNAL OUTREACH ACTIVITIES

CONFERENCE FOR CONTRACTORS
In March, the Centre welcomed approximately 
90  contractors  to  Luxembourg  for  an  all-
day  event.  The  participants,  both  individual 
representatives 
freelance 
of  translation  companies,  were  some  of  the 
successful  candidates  who  had  participated 
in  the  calls  for  tenders  for  translations  in  the 
general ﬁ eld in 2013. 

translators  and 

In  turn,  in  August,  the  Centre  welcomed  a 
delegation  from  the  Translation  Centre  of  the 
Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Armenia. 
Good  practices  were  exchanged  with 
its 
Director and three Heads of Department. They 
attended  presentations  that  covered  a  wide 
variety  of  ﬁ elds:  organisation  of  the  workﬂ ow, 
CAT  tools,  terminology  work  and  handling  of 
client feedback. 

The conference allowed them to get acquainted 
(the 
the  Centre’s  working  methods 
with 
translation  workﬂ ow,  language  resources  and 
quality assurance measures), some legal and 
administrative issues and the e-CdT project.

During  this  study  visit,  the  Centre  had  the 
opportunity to learn more about the Armenian 
Translation Centre. Attached to the Ministry of 
Justice, it is the ofﬁ cial translation hub for the 
President’s Ofﬁ ce, the Prime Minister’s Ofﬁ ce, 
all  ministries,  State  agencies,  bodies  adjunct 
to the Government, etc. In addition, it provides 
language services to clients such as UNHCR, 
USAID and the EBRD.

  Conference for contractors

CONFERENCE ON LEGAL TRANSLATION AT 
THE TRANSLATION CENTRE OF THE MINISTRY 
OF JUSTICE OF THE REPUBLIC OF ARMENIA 
AND STUDY VISIT OF THE ARMENIAN 
TRANSLATION CENTRE
In May, the Centre gave a keynote speech in 
Yerevan  at  the  conference  organised  by  the 
Translation  Centre  attached  to  the  Ministry 
of  Justice  of  the  Republic  of Armenia  as  part 
of  an  EU  twinning  project  coordinated  by  the 
Deutsche Stiftung für Internationale Rechtliche 
Zusammenarbeit  –  IRZ-Stiftung.  The  purpose 
of this project is to develop appropriate judicial 
reform  structures  at  the Armenian  Ministry  of 
Justice  so  that  legal  approximation  of  the  EU 
‘acquis’ in the justice sector can be effectively 
implemented and enforced. 

  Study visit of the Armenian Translation Centre

EU AGENCIES’ EXHIBITION AT THE 
EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT
Between  5  and  8  October  2014,  the  EU 
Agencies  organised  an  exhibition  at 
the 
European  Parliament  to  raise  awareness  of 
their activities among the new MEPs. 

The  event  was  coordinated  by  the  European 
Union  Agency 
for  Fundamental  Rights 
(FRA)  as  part  of  the  2014  work  programme 
agreed  by  the  Heads  of Agencies  /  Heads  of 
Communication  and  Information  Networks.  In 
addition to FRA and the Centre, the following 
agencies  and  Joint  Undertakings  participated 

33

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR

2014

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR

2014

in 
the  exhibition:  BBI-JU,  BEREC, 
Cedefop, CleanSky JU, EDA, EEA, EIGE, 
Eurofound, Eurojust, FCH JU and SJU.

Representatives  from  the  participating 
agencies  manning  the  stand  had  the 
opportunity  of  having  direct  contact 
with  the  MEPs,  their  staff  and  visitors 
interested  in  the  work  of  the  agencies. 
They provided information not only about 
their  own  agencies,  but  also  about  the 
EU agencies not represented at the event.

The new brochure ‘EU Agencies working 
for  you’,  available  in  English,  French 
and German, published by the Agencies’ 
network  in  2014  under  the  coordination 
of  FRA40,  was  presented,  and  visitors 
leaﬂ ets,  ﬂ yers,  stickers, 
were  given 
copies  of  activity  reports,  and  all  kinds 
of  promotional  material  by  the  various 
participating agencies.

The event was a good opportunity for all 
agencies to raise awareness of the work 
they  do  for  Europe’s  politicians  and  the 
European citizens.

CONTACT WITH MEMBER STATE 
UNIVERSITIES

Subtitling seminar

In  March,  Dr  Jorge  Diaz-Cintas,  from 
University  College  London,  gave  a  talk 
on  subtitling  to  the  Centre’s  in-house 
translators.  In  a  videoconference,  they 
information  about 
received  valuable 
linguistic 
subtitling:  ease  of  reading, 
matters,  spatial  limits,  conversion  of  oral 
language  to  written  language,  subtitling 
software available on the market, cultural 
aspects, etc. 

The seminar was organised after a survey 
carried  out  by  the  Centre  in  2013  had 
identiﬁ ed  subtitling  as  one  of  the  major 
new  services  the  Centre’s  clients  were 
seeking  in  order  to  give  greater  access 
and  visibility  to  the  multimedia  content 
available  on  their  websites.  Following 
the  Management  Board’s  adoption  of 

40 See http://cdt.europa.eu/EN/documentation/Pages/
Publications.aspx

34

  EU Agencies’ exhibition at the European Parliament

the  Centre’s  proposal  in  October  2014, 
subtitling will become part of the Centre’s 
service portfolio as of 2015.

Seminar on Legal Translation in 
Salamanca

In  March,  the  University  of  Salamanca 
held its 4th Seminar on Legal Translation 
dedicated  to  its  students  of  interpreting 
and  translation.  The  organisers  invited 
members  of  the  legal  professions  and 
translators and interpreters working in EU 
and international organisations to describe 
their  work.  The  Centre  was  invited  to 
present  its  activities  and  how  translation 
was  organised  in-house.  This  annual 
seminar is one of the activities organised 
by IAMLADP’s University Contact Group.

Presentation of the Centre’s activities 
at the University of Liège

In April, at the invitation of the University of 
Liège,  the  Centre  presented  its  activities 
to the students enrolled in the 2nd year of 
the Master’s Degree course in translation 
and  interpreting. They  learned  about  the 
everyday  work  of  EU  translators,  the 
computer-assisted 
tools  at 
their  disposal,  the  IATE  and  ECHA-term 
terminology  databases,  the  translation 
process  for  Community  trade  marks,  the 
network of EU agencies, etc. 

translation 

In  the  Q&A  session  that  followed  the 
presentation, the most recurrent question 
was  whether  it  was  preferable  for  future 
translators  to  learn  additional  languages 

or  to  acquire  further  knowledge  in  a 
speciﬁ c ﬁ eld. 

11th International Conference 
on Terminology and Knowledge 
Engineering (TKE) 

took  part 

In  June,  a  member  of  the  Terminology 
Coordination  Team 
the 
International  Conference  on  Terminology 
and  Knowledge  Engineering  (TKE)  held 
in Berlin, which focused on ontology, and 
terminology and text mining.

in 

The  aim  of  this  conference  was  to  bring 
together  researchers  from  these  related 
ﬁ elds, provide an overview of the state-of-
the-art technologies, discuss problems and 
opportunities  and  exchange  information 
regarding the topics mentioned above.

International Terminology Summer 
School

In  July,  staff  from  the  Centre  attended 
the  International  Terminology  Summer 
School,  a  ﬁ ve-day  event  organised  in 
Vienna  by  TermNet, 
International 
Network for Terminology.

the 

Over 90 participants from the public (EU, 
UN,  IAEA,  etc.)  and  the  private  sectors 
listened  to  the  presentations  given  by 
prominent ﬁ gures in the terminology ﬁ eld. 
The  range  of  topics  covered  was  quite 
large  as  the  Summer  School  offered 
lectures  on  the  design  of  workﬂ ows,  the 
terminology  extraction  tools  available  on 

Over  100  in-house  translators  took  part 
in  the  two  seminars,  which  focused  on 
the  Basel  III  agreements,  the  Capital 
the  Capital 
Requirements  Directive, 
Requirements  Regulation,  the  Banking 
Union, the Single Supervisory Mechanism 
and the Single Resolution Mechanism. 

training  came  at  a  particularly 
The 
appropriate 
the 
time,  coinciding  with 
signature of the agreement with the Single 
Resolution Board in December 2014.

TRAINEES AT THE CENTRE
With  a  view  to  establishing  contacts 
with  Member  State  universities, 
the 
Centre  published  a  call  for  traineeships 
in  January  2014  to  recruit  university 
students or young professionals following 
postgraduate  studies.  After  a  successful 
selection 
trainees 
joined  the  Centre  during  the  year:  three 
translators (Croatian, French and German) 
and one person working in the Language 
and Technology Support Section.

procedure, 

four 

As  in  the  past,  the  Centre  arranged 
information sessions for trainees from the 
other EU institutions, welcoming 10 groups 
from  the  European  Commission  and  the 
European  Parliament  (326  trainees  in 
total).

to  anticipate 

linguists  appear 
those 
changes  with  mixed  feelings:  some  are 
reluctant or highly opposed, whilst others 
forward 
are  enthusiastic  and 
to 
their  opinion,  all 
them.  Whatever 
understood the risks implied and the need 
to address them as soon as possible.

looking 

10th anniversary of the ‘European 
Master in Specialised Translation’ 
(METS)

In  November,  the  Centre  attended  a 
seminar  in  Brussels  to  celebrate  the 
10th  anniversary  of  the  METS    (‘Master 
Européen  en  Traduction  Spécialisée’), 
an  exchange  programme  between 
12  European 
universities, 
translation  students  a 
which  offers 
year  of  specialisation  and  intercultural 
professionalisation. 

partner 

representative 

took 
The  Centre’s 
part  in  a  round-table  discussion  with 
employers  from  the  public  and  private 
sectors  (European  Commission,  NATO, 
translation companies, etc.).

Financial seminars for in-house 
translators

the  highly 

Given 
technical  nature  of 
the  texts  received  from  the  supervisory 
authorities  (EBA,  EIOPA,  ESMA),  the 
Centre  invited  two  experts  in  this  ﬁ eld: 
Professor  David  Howarth 
the 
University  of  Luxembourg  and  Professor 
Lucia  Quaglia  from  the  Department  of 
Politics  at  the  University  of  York  (UK)  to 
hold seminars on its premises. 

from 

the market, current terminology standards, 
etc.  The  Centre  gave  a  presentation  on 
how it manages terminology in-house.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 
YEAR

The EURALEX 2014 Congress on 
Lexicography in Bolzano

In July, the Centre was represented at the 
16th  EURALEX  International  Congress, 
which  took  place  in  Italy  and  attracted 
over  225  participants  from  almost  40 
different  countries.  EURALEX 
the 
European  Association  for  Lexicography. 
In the rapidly-changing world of language 
language  description, 
analysis  and 
EURALEX provides a forum for exchange 
of ideas. 

is 

between 

The  Centre’s  representative  delivered  a 
keynote  speech:  ‘From  lexicography  to 
terminology:  a  cline,  not  a  dichotomy’, 
in  which  he  showed  that  the  traditional 
terminological 
distinction 
items  and  lexical  items  has  become 
increasingly  blurred. This  plenary  lecture 
was an opportunity to showcase the IATE 
interinstitutional  terminological  database, 
as  well  as  ECHA-Term,  the  term  base 
developed by the Centre for ECHA.

FIT XXth World Congress

In  August,  a  French  translator,  together 
with  1  600  linguists  from  72  countries, 
participated in the XXth World Congress of 
the International Federation of Translators 
(FIT), which took place in Germany at the 
Freie Universität Berlin.

over 

hosted 

The  University 
180 
presentations  and  panel  discussions, 
11  short  seminars  and  around  40  poster 
sessions, in addition to a trade exhibition, 
job  exchange 
fairs  and  networking 
activities.  The  Centre’s  representative 
in 
delivered  a  speech  on 
translation: 
to 
translation software’.

‘Editing 
typewriter 

from 

the 

Translators, 

Entitled  ‘Man  vs  Machine?  The  Future 
and 
of 
Terminologists’, 
focused 
on  the  signiﬁ cant  changes  taking  place 
in  these  professions.  Translators  and 

the  congress 

Interpreters 

  Seminar with Professor Lucia Quaglia from the 
Department of Politics at the University of York (UK)

35

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR

2014

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR 2014

2014

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 
YEAR

PART V. 

EXTERNAL COMMUNICATION

STATISTICS ON THE USE OF THE CENTRE’S 
PUBLIC WEBSITE
the  European 
As 
by 
recommended 
for  a  common 
Commission’s  Roadmap 
approach  towards  EU Agencies,  the  Centre’s 
public  website  is  available  in  the  24  ofﬁ cial 
languages  of  the  European  Union.  In  2014, 
over 119 000 visits were recorded, the following 
languages  being  the  most  popular:  English, 
Spanish, French, Italian and German.

News  items  were  published  on  a  regular 
basis  on  the  welcome  page,  as  well  as  job 
opportunities and calls for tenders.

cdt.europa.eu

translators, 

THE CENTRE ON FACEBOOK
With over 3 500 fans, the Translation Centre’s 
Facebook  page  attracts  a  wide  audience 
of 
linguists,  students,  clients, 
academic  community  members  and  other  EU 
staff.  The  page  has  achieved  the  goal  set  at 
its  launch  in  October  2011,  namely  to  target 
audiences  beyond  the  reach  of  traditional 
communication  channels  and  to  secure  the 
Centre’s presence in new media, thus making 
it better known to the European public.

On  its  Facebook  page,  the  Centre  publishes 
posts  on  a  wide  variety  of  subjects,  most  of 
which relate to its activities, the network of EU 
agencies and multilingualism in the European 
Union. As may be expected, job opportunities 
and  calls  for  tenders  are  the  most  popular 
posts. Interinstitutional and interagency events, 
EU  language  studies,  etc.  also  attract  great 
interest.

facebook.com/translationcentre

NEW STRATEGY 2016-2018: MOVING 
FORWARD 
In  October  2014,  the  Centre’s  Management 
Board  adopted  the  new  strategy  covering 
the  period  2016-2018.  Entitled 
‘Strategy 
2016-2018:  Moving  forward’,  it  presents  four 
objectives,  namely  1)  be  a  trusted  client-
oriented service provider; 2) achieve excellence 
by enhancing the Centre’s business model; 3) 
be an attractive employer and business partner; 
and 4) support the creation of interinstitutional 
synergies.  These  strategic  objectives  will  be 
translated  into  activities  to  be  integrated  into 
the  work  progammes  for  the  corresponding 
years.

THE TRANSLATION CENTRE – A PRACTICAL 
GUIDE FOR CLIENTS 
The  publication  ‘The  Translation  Centre  –  a 
practical  guide  for  clients’  was  updated  twice 
in 2014 to reﬂ ect changes in the organisation 
and the Centre’s pricing structure and service 
offer.  Both  the  PDF  and  the  online  versions 
were  made  available  on  the  Client  Portal  as 
guidance and reference tools for clients when 
placing requests.

THE LANGUAGE HUB – THE CENTRE’S 
CLIENT NEWSLETTER – FOURTH EDITION
The  Centre  presented  its  fourth  issue  of  its 
client  newsletter  The  language  hub  at  the 
Management Board meeting in October 2014. 
This issue focuses on the work of the Language 
and  Technology  Support  Section  and  the 
Budgetary  and  Strategic  Planning  Section.  It 
describes how the Centre plans and monitors 
its activities through multiannual strategies and 
annual  work  programmes;  brieﬂ y  outlines  the 
Strategy for the period 2016-2018; introduces 
video subtitling as a new service for clients to be 
offered as from 2015; and includes information 
on  the  Centre’s  terminology  work  and  new 

37

  The Centre’s website

  The Centre on Facebook

  The Centre’ s Strategy 2016-2018

  The Centre’s practical guide for clients
 - online version

CdT - Translation Centre for the Bodies of the European Union

No 4
The language hub

The Translation Centre’s client newsletter

Contents

Organisation

Meet the different sections of the Translation Centre 

The Centre’s workﬂ ow

Pre-, mid- and post-treatment of ﬁ les 

Strategic planning & monitoring
From Strategy to annual Work Programmes 

Services

Subtitling: a new service 
How the Centre deals with terminology projects 

Survey on EU Agencies’ approaches

to multilingualism 

Coming up in the next issue 

2-3

4-5

6-7

8
9

10

10

of  2013.  In  line  with  its  outcome,  we 
have  been  working  this  year  on  video 
subtitling  as  a  new  service  for  clients 
to  be  offered  as  from  2015.  You  may 
discover  in  this  issue  where  we  stand 
with this project and what you need to 
consider when requesting this service. 

You  will  also  ﬁ nd  information  on  how 
the  Centre  organises 
terminology 
projects and on our new “Terminology” 
leaﬂ et,  which  outlines  in  brief  what 
such  a  project  entails  and  how  it  may 
contribute to quality assurance.

Last  but  not  least,  the  Centre  was 
tasked this year with running a survey 
the  EU 
on  multilingualism  among 
agencies.  The  reasons  behind 
this 
survey as well as the main conclusions 
and recommendations resulting from it 
are also presented in this newsletter.

I  hope  I  have  made  you  curious  and  I 
wish you happy reading!

Marie-Anne Fernández
Acting Director

Editorial

Planning  and  support  activities  are 
essential  for  the  operations  of  the 
Translation  Centre.  This 
is  equally 
valid for strategic management and for 
the  smooth  running  of  the  translation 
workﬂ ow.

This  is  why  in  this  4th  issue  of  our 
client newsletter The language hub 
we  are  focusing  on  the  work  of  two 
sections,  namely  the  Budgetary  and 
Strategic  Planning  Section  as  well  as 
the Language and Technology Support 
Section.

The ﬁ rst oversees the strategic planning 
and  monitoring  cycle,  according 
to 
which 
the  Centre  elaborates  and 
implements  its  multiannual  strategies, 
annual work programmes and budgets. 
2014  was  a  particular  year  in  so  far 
as the Centre had to draft its Strategy 
for  the  period  2016-2018,  which  tries 
to  combine  continuity  of  high-quality 
service for our clients with investment in 
working methods and tools. 

The  second  section  intervenes  in  the 
technical  and  linguistic  preparation  of 
work to be assigned to translators and 
the ﬁ nalisation of ﬁ les to be returned to 
our clients and thus plays an important 
role in ensuring client satisfaction. 

Driven  by  technological  developments 
and  the  ﬁ rm  wish  to  ﬁ nd  solutions  for 
clients’  communication  needs, 
the 
Centre  is  continuously  reviewing  its 
service offer. To this end, a survey was 
conducted among our clients at the end 

Centre de traduction des organes de l’Union européenne  (cid:132)(cid:3)Bâtiment Drosbach
12E, rue Guillaume Kroll  (cid:132)  L-1882 Luxembourg  (cid:132)  Tel.: +352 42 17 11 1  (cid:132)  Fax: +352 42 17 11 220  (cid:132)  Email: cdt@cdt.europa.eu  (cid:132)(cid:3)Internet: http://cdt.europa.eu(cid:3)

TRANSLATION CENTRE 
FOR THE BODIES OF 
THE EUROPEAN UNION 

INVESTING IN QUALITY 

TERMINOLOGY 

  The Centre’s client newsletter ‘The language hub’

  The Centre’s new ‘Terminology’ leaﬂ et

  The Centre’s Communication Framework

36

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR

2014

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR 2014

2014

‘Terminology’  leaﬂ et.  Finally,  it  debriefs 
the Centre’s clients on the outcome of the 
survey  on  EU  agencies’  approaches  to 
multilingualism. The newsletter was made 
available to clients on the Client Portal. 

the 

TERMINOLOGY LEAFLET
The  Centre  published 
leaﬂ et 
‘Terminology  –  Investing  in  quality’  in 
October 2013. The leaﬂ et outlines in brief 
what  a  terminology  project  entails  and 
how it contributes to quality assurance. It 
adds to the series of marketing brochures 
dedicated 
the  Centre’s  services: 
in  quality  and 
‘Revision  – 
Editing – Investing in quality’. They can be 
downloaded from the Centre’s website.

Investing 

to 

cdt.europa.eu/EN/documentation/Pages/
Publications.aspx.

COMMUNICATION FRAMEWORK 
The  Centre  reviewed  its  Communication 
Framework,  which  covers  both  internal 
and  external  communication,  to  reﬂ ect 
the  changes  that  occurred  during  2014. 
The  document  is  expected  to  undergo 
a  major  overhaul  in  2015  as  it  will  take 
into  account  1)  the  objectives  set  out  in 
the  new  strategy  2016-2018  adopted  by 
the Management Board in October 2014, 
and  2) 
the  Centre’s 
multilingual  policy  document  resulting 
the  recommendations  presented 
from 
by  the  Heads  of  Communication  and 
Information Network (HCIN) to the Heads 
of EU Agencies at their meeting in October 
201441.

the  creation  of 

41 For further information on these recommendations, see 
page 26.

38

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 
YEAR

 ANNEXES

The Translation Centre’s organisation chart

Management Board
Rytis Martikonis
Chairman

External Relations
and Communication Section

Acting Director
M-A. Fernández

Director’s Assistant / Management Board Secretariat

Director’s Ofﬁ ce Secretariat

Translation
Department

Translation Support
Department

Administration
Department

IT Department

Community 
Trademarks and 
Designs

Accounting Ofﬁ cer

Project
Management Ofﬁ ce

Finno-Ugric, Baltic and 
Slavonic 1 Language 
Group

Interinstitutional
IATE Group

Budgetary and Strategic
Planning Section

Development Section

Germanic and Slavonic 2
Language Group

Demand
Management Section

Legal Affairs Section

Service Desk Section

Romance
and Mediterranean 
Language Group

Language and
Technology Support 
Section

Facilities
and Security Group

IT Infrastructure Section

Human Resources Section

39

 
HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR 2014

Total volume: 758 061  pages

Volume vs forecast (in pages)

Community trademarks 
63.5% (481 234 pages)

Preliminary draft budget 2014
Initial budget 2014
Amending budget 1/2014
Amending budget 2/2014
Invoiced pages
Translated pages

9
2
4

9
6
7

0
2
6

4
5
7

1
6
0

8
5
7

0
7
3

3
8
6

2
4
3

2
8
6

2
4
3

2
8
6

Documents
36.5% (276 827 pages)

4
0
3

7
8
2

6
7
2

6
8
2

6
7
2

6
8
2

0
5
1

4
9
2

6
8
3

3
7
2

7
2
8

6
7
2

9
7
2

5
7
4

4
3
2

1
8
4

4
3
2

1
8
4

6
6
0

6
9
3

6
6
0

6
9
3

6
6
0

6
9
3

Volume per client (in pages)

Documents

Trade marks

Total

4
0
6
4
9

3
4
4
7
2

7
6
7
1
3

6
2
2
6

4
3
3

6
9
1

5
8
7

3
9
1

L
P
M
E
G
D

P
O
F
E
D
E
C

U
E
J
C

L
O
P
E
C

A
E
F
A
H
C

6
5
9

5
1
1

O
V
P
C

U
J
S
C

1
7
6
1

I

L
E
S
N
O
C

4
9
2

6
5
5

R
E
C
A

e
c

i
f
f

O
C
E
R
E
B

1
3
4
1
1

5
8
8
8

5
6
3
7

2
3
2
5

9
1
1

4
4
9
8 1
7

1
4
4

9
8
1

8
0
1

5
3
9
5

1
0
2
2

3
5
7
1

1
4
3
1

A
E
C
A
E

E
M
S
A
E

A
S
A
E

O
S
A
E

A
B
E

A
C
E

B
C
E

C
D
C
E

A
H
C
E

A
D
E

S
P
D
E

A
E
E

A
C
F
E

A
S
F
E

U
J
L
E
S
C
E

2
1
1

B
E

I

7
3
2
2

3
6
4
1

E
G
E

I

A
P
O
E

I

9
3
3

I

T
E

A
M
E

9
0
5
2

A
D
D
C
M
E

3
1
7

9
4
2

A
S
M
E

A
S
N
E

I

4
1
6
7

4
7
1
3

5
6
0
3

6
9
3
3

0
8

2
7
8
6

4
1
1
6

A
R
E

C
R
E

F
T
E

A
M
S
E

I

A
S
L
-
u
e

A
H
S
O
U
E

-

D
N
U
O
F
O
R
U
E

0
5
0
2

T
S
U
J
O
R
U
E

4
8
7

2
4
3

E
4
F

L
O
P
O
R
U
E

6
4

U
J
H
C
F

2
7
8
3
1

A
R
F

7
7
2
2

X
E
T
N
O
R
F

5
2

0
5

7
9
4

A
S
G

U
J

I

M

I

A
E
N

I

I

M
H
O

6
9
1

6
6

A
E
R

U
J
S

5
9
0
3

N
A
M
S
D
U
B
M
O

40

Human and financial resources 2014 (forecast(*) vs actual)

Activities

Figure type

Human resources (**)(***)

Financial resources (***)

Total (%)

Total

Ofﬁ cials

TA

CA

Title 1

Title 2

Title 3

Total budget

Budget (%)

Core operational activity: 
translation

Support activities

External outreach

Management and super-
vision activities

Grand total

Forecast

Actual

Forecast

Actual

Forecast

Actual

Forecast

Actual

Forecast

Actual

(*) See Annual Work Programme 2014.
(**) Expressed in full-time equivalents (FTE).
(***) Rounded-up ﬁ gures.

64.9%

145.9

66.5%

143.8

25.9%

25.4%

2.3%

2.2%

6.9%

5.9%

100%

58.3

55.0

5.2

4.8

15.6

12.8

225

100%

216.4

31.2

28.4

13.6

12.9

2.4

2.2

11.8

10.5

59

54

99.7

96.2

37.7

35.9

2.8

2.6

3.8

2.3

144

137

15

17 036 197

3 805 891

14 703 000

35 545 088

19.2

15 707 625

4 126 695

14 455 553

34 289 873

7

6.2

0

0

0

0

4 834 528

1 511 240

937 000

7 282 768

4 445 183

1 345 635

686 002

6 476 820

741 038

634 336

2 631 437

2 019 238

164 793

128 046

455 676

430 857

705 000

1 610 831

663 839

1 426 221

0

0

3 087 113

2 450 095

22

25 243 200

5 937 600

16 345 000

48 302 800

25.4

22 806 382

6 031 233

15 805 394

44 643 009

73.6%

76.8%

15.1%

14.5%

3.3%

3.2%

6.4%

5.5%

100%

100%

41

 
 
 
 
 
HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR 2014

Key figures 2014 per client(*)

ACER

BEREC Ofﬁ ce

DG-EMPL

Cedefop

CEPOL

Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators

Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications Ofﬁ ce

Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion – European Commission

European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training

European Police College

CHAFEA (formerly EAHC)

Consumers, Health, Agriculture and Food Executive Agency (formerly: Executive Agency for Health and Consumers)

CJEU

Council

CPVO

CSJU

EACEA

EASA

Court of Justice of the European Union

Council of the European Union

Community Plant Variety Ofﬁ ce

Clean Sky Joint Undertaking

Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency

European Aviation Safety Agency

EASME (formerly EACI)

Executive Agency for Small and Medium-sized enterprises (formerly: Executive Agency for Competitiveness and Innovation)

EASO

EBA

ECA

ECB

ECDC

ECHA

ECSEL JU (replacing ARTE-
MIS JU + ENIAC JU)
EDA

EDPS

EEA

EFCA

EFSA

EIB

EIGE

EIOPA

EIT

EMA

EMCDDA

EMSA

ENISA

ERA

ERCEA

ESMA

ETF

eu-LISA

EU-OSHA

Eurofound

Eurojust

Europol

F4E

FCH JU

FRA

Frontex

GSA

IMI JU

European Asylum Support Ofﬁ ce

European Banking Authority

European Court of Auditors

European Central Bank

European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control

European Chemicals Agency

Electronic Components and Systems for European Leadership Joint Undertaking

European Defence Agency

European Data Protection Supervisor

European Environment Agency

European Fisheries Control Agency

European Food Safety Agency

European Investment Bank

European Institute for Gender Equality

European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority

European Institute of Innovation and Technology

European Medicines Agency

European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction

European Maritime Safety Agency

European Union Agency for Network and Information Security

European Railway Agency

European Research Council Executive Agency

European Securities and Markets Authority

European Training Foundation

European Agency for the operational management of large-scale IT systems in the area of freedom, security and justice

European Agency for Safety and Health at Work

European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions

European Judicial Cooperation Unit

European Police Ofﬁ ce

Fusion for Energy Joint Undertaking

Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking

European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights

European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the European Union

European GNSS Agency

Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking

INEA (formerly TEN-T EA)

Innovation and Networks Executive Agency (formerly:Trans-European Transport Network Executive Agency)

OHIM

OHIM TM

Ombudsman

REA

SJU

42

Ofﬁ ce for Harmonization in the Internal Market (Trade Marks and Designs) - Documents

Ofﬁ ce for Harmonization in the Internal Market (Trade Marks and Designs) - Trademarks and Designs

European Ombudsman

Research Executive Agency

SESAR Joint Undertaking

.
r
e
d
r
o

l

a
c
i
t
e
b
a
h
p
a

l

n

i

d
e
t
s

i
l

e
r
a

s
t
n
e

i
l

C

)
*
(

Translated
(2013)

85

904

15235

1309

1257

1224

557

2776

860

123

4492

12519

243

9238

5747

130

349

1007

25566

104

105

7619

2571

1033

2708

135

2483

13477

206

36880

1863

756

921

7096

79

6157

2485

575

4515

6634

1892

2769

492

42

8985

4412

38

213

542

81135

509798

5977

79

199

   Total         number of pages

Respect of deadlines
(in documents) 

Requested deadlines
(in pages)

Client Satisfaction Forms 
(CSF)

Translated
(2014)

294.0

555.5

6225.5

333.5

195.5

785.5

193.0

1670.5

956.0

115.0

5232.0

8884.5

119.0

11430.5

7365.0

77.5

1943.5

440.5

27443.0

188.5

108.0

5934.5

2201.0

1753.0

1341.0

111.5

1463.0

2236.5

339.0

31766.5

2508.5

713.0

248.5

7614.0

79.5

3174.0

3064.5

3395.5

6872.0

6114.0

2049.5

783.5

342.0

46.0

13872.0

2276.5

24.5

49.5

497.0

94603.5

481234.0

3095.0

66.0

195.5

Tendency

Requested

Delivered

Slow

Scheduled

Normal

Urgent

Very urgent

Returned

Return Rate













































































































33

91

2388

63

60

82

18

87

200

23

576

307

73

336

561

18

244

198

3411

53

6

757

211

93

253

9

184

251

57

9073

169

32

56

384

72

279

230

179

1492

945

24

275

36

46

916

71

23

24

33

91

2363

63

60

82

18

87

200

23

576

307

73

336

560

18

242

195

3342

52

6

756

210

86

253

9

184

250

57

9071

168

32

56

384

72

279

230

179

1491

944

1

275

36

46

916

71

23

24

199

11383

199

11315

722

31

92

722

31

92

17.0

7.0

4.0

4.5

5.0

41.5

2.5

4.5

32.5

7.0

22.0

105.5

1426.5

335.0

1112.0

6408.0

93.5

190.0

737.0

6.0

236.0

1721.0

17.5

301.0

1.0

909.5

4627.0

127.5

1945.0

836.0

26616.5

851.0

2047.0

33.0

3.0

11.0

1658.0

3280.0

199.5

2.5

53.0

23.0

7.5

34.5

98.0

4749.0

254.5

5.5

229.5

106.0

511.5

532.5

5.0

1883.5

714.0

119.0

8788.0

5967.0

8.5

706.5

143.5

26516.5

100.0

21.5

233.0

1941.5

1301.0

379.0

64.0

1380.0

177.5

145.5

1308.0

597.0

713.0

132.5

6009.5

33.0

1263.5

1956.0

115.5

6329.0

5427.0

590.0

22.0

132.0

457.5

50.0

79.0

556.0

87.0

87.0

417.5

110.0

1983.5

41.5

2635.5

1304.5

47.5

936.0

297.0

922.0

87.5

86.5

160.0

259.5

452.0

793.0

47.5

83.0

111.5

189.0

2973.5

1911.5

76.0

750.5

35.5

252.5

1108.5

343.5

687.0

140.5

342.0

1.0

10429.0

3435.5

2163.0

33.0

80.5

49.5

446.0

24.5

51.0

2

4

2

12

12

1

8

3

298

7

69

144

110

2

4

3

1

21

26

650

28

1

9

80

2

39

356

23

71

2

22

6.1% ACER

BEREC Ofﬁ ce

0.2% DG-EMPL

3.2% Cedefop

CEPOL

CHAFEA (formerly EAHC)

66.7% CJEU

13.8% Council

0.5% CPVO

CSJU

EACEA

2.6% EASA

EASME (formerly EACI)

0.9% EASO

53.1% EBA

38.9% ECA

28.3% ECB

72.7% ECDC

3.2% ECHA

3.8% ECSEL JU (replacing AR-
TEMIS JU + ENIAC JU)
EDA

0.5% EDPS

1.4% EEA

1.1% EFCA

8.3% EFSA

EIB

13.9% EIGE

EIOPA

EIT

6.9% EMA

13% EMCDDA

3.1% EMSA

ENISA

2.2% ERA

ERCEA

26.7% ESMA

ETF

1.1% eu-LISA

2.6% EU-OSHA

36% Eurofound

34.3% Eurojust

25.8% Europol

F4E

FCH JU

0.2% FRA

23.4% Frontex

GSA

IMI JU

INEA (formerly TEN-T EA)

21188.5

121.5

61366.0

10511.0

1416.5

269

0.9% OHIM

1978.0

1102.5

14.5

195.5

14.5

51.5

OHIM TM

Ombudsman

REA

SJU

43

 
 
 
 
 
 
x
x
x
x

-

N
N
E
-
1
0
0
-
5
1
-
C
A
-
F
T