Quality in institutional EU translation: parameters, policies and practices

Over the last decade EU institutions have raised the profile of quality, as evidenced by an increased number of translation policies and guidelines. The objective of the chapter is to identify the quality parameters of EU translation by synthesizing and evaluating institutional policies and practices on the one hand and the academic literature on the other hand. Two interrelated dimensions will be distinguished: the quality of translation at the textual level and the quality of processes in translation service provision. The former covers two dimensions — equivalence and textual fit/clarity while the latter covers the management of people, processes and resources, as well as the availability of translations. One of the promising developments is the reframing of quality discourse by the explicit linking of translation quality at the textual level to genre clusters, with a shift of focus from equivalence to clarity. On the other hand, such classifications may be seen as being triggered by the need to prioritize documents, as part of the fit-for-purpose approach, in order to prudently manage resources and costs in line with the required level of quality. Translation has been at the core of the European integration, being its key enabler and facilitator from the very beginnings of the European Coal and Steel Community in the early 1950s. Because of the significance and scale of European Union (EU) translation, its quality is a fundamental concept which has gained increased attention in EU institutional policies, increasingly so in the last decade. Challenging some fundamental concepts of Translation Studies, such as the source text, target text, translation process, etc. (cf. Biel 2014: 59ff), EU translation also challenges our understanding of translation quality. As emphasized by Dollerup 2001, the quality of EU translation tends to be evaluated “by criteria which do not really apply” (285) and “it is not translation alone that makes the product” (290), but a complex array of political, ideological and procedural factors. The objective of this chapter is to identify the quality parameters of EU translation by critically analyzing institutional policies and practices and by synthesizing the existing literature and viewpoints from within EU institutions and from the outside. The chapter will first define and categorize EU translation, map quality in the EU context and its components, making a fundamental distinction between the quality of translation as a product and quality of processes in translation service provision, and identifying key threats and challenges to quality