The question until now was: if we want a democratic EU with 23 official languages, how can that work without compromising on efficiency? Look at the European patent: an issue unresolved for 40 years because European leaders could not agree which 3 or 5 languages will be the ‘dominant’ ones to translate all patents into – so a political stand-off followed. Now, thanks to technology, Google offered to translate automatically and for free all European Patent Office filings via its massive service.

On a more practical level, Google is now experimenting with a real-time, automatic (!) voice interpretation service. It’s still being developed, but it may lead to significant changes for EU institutions who employ the largest linguistic service in the world: around 8000 translators and interpreters.

If this service becomes mature enough, we may see EPSO recruitments and EU officials affected by huge savings in human resources thanks to a free or low-cost service.

It starts with languages and patents, but it may slowly affect decision-making, infrstructure planning and who knows what else. Would Google be able to save the Euro one day? Let’s see…

Posted in Marketing