EU translators at work to answer céist na teanga

IRISH is now a fully-fledged EU working language, and European Union institutions are rapidly building up a complement of qualified people to interpret the spoken word and translate the written.

This is something of an achievement given that those responsible for the service had only months to prepare and recruit, compared to Bulgaria and Romania, whose languages also came on stream on January 1. They had at least ten years to prepare and set up training and recruiting processes.

Ireland, on the other hand, was at a disadvantage as the Dáil and Seanad must be about the only other places in the world where translation and interpretation is required on a regular basis.