Thanks for offering an insight into your own experience of applying to work for the EU – it really brings an extra dimension to this issue. It is indeed very sad to see that yet again English native speaker translators are being reflected in a poor light.

I dare to dream that the tide is turning in the UK, with more school children choosing languages. I think it might be….very slowly. The professions of translating and interpreting just need more and more positive publicity in order to help to counteract the shortages and/or apparent poor quality. I think the ITI might have organized career talks at some universities in the past, but perhaps it’s time to reach out to primary schools?!

Yes, the comments on The Times article just beggar belief. Despite growing up in the UK, I’ve managed to avoid too much exposure to the whole ‘faceless eurocrat’ way of thinking (prob by steadfastly ignoring certain factions of the press!) and I’m always astounded to see or hear such ridiculously anti-EU views.

Memo to self: no more comments after 9.30pm at night…

Good points on the role of the recruitment and training process in contributing to the shortage. I started the application process many years back and it was pretty tortuous. It drags out over months and even years – I’d decided that it wasn’t for me long before I got anywhere near completing the process. But they do seem to have done a good job of trying to make this less painful of late. The UK Permanent Representation to the EU have long offered excellent support to would-be applicants from the UK (http://www.ukrep.be/working.html), which is more than can be said for many other member states. Plus, it’s exactly the same procedure for every member state, so all in all it seems hard to lay all the blame there.

There’s no doubt the roots of the problem go back much further than the government’s 2004 decision to remove languages from the list of compulsory GCSEs. But then if I remember correctly, the government’s decision was seen as only the final nail in the coffin. Personally, I can’t help but think that the overall tendency towards Euroscepticism in the UK has a lot to do with putting people off applying in the first place. There’s really only so many articles one can read about how “faceless eurocrats” are wasting billions on translation [snort!] into random and/or little known languages [outrage!] in far distant Brussels [snigger!] before it starts to have an effect on young people and their attitudes towards languages in general.

But then I’m probably biased: my formative language-learning years were set to an extremely pro-European backdrop and I know for sure that I wouldn’t be a translator today if I’d grown up in the UK. (My younger self might say for the better – but that’s another story!)

Whatever the reasons, I think there’s no doubt that the shortage exists. I clearly remember representatives from various EU and UN institutions warning about the shortage of native English speakers at various conferences I attended as far back as 2002. That the shortage exists at all is such a shame. It does nothing to enhance the profile of professional, native English translators and plays to the very worst stereotypes of English speakers generally. A sad day for us all

Now, what can we as translators do to help fix it??

Btw, I particularly liked your Monty Python reference!