Macedonia will need about one hundred simultaneous interpreters in Brussels

Macedonia will need at least eighty simultaneous translators-interpreters the day when it will become a member of the European Union . Half of them must be accredited and permanentlly employrd in the institutions of the Union and the other half would be wotkimg on contract basis .Macedonia has a dozen accredited translators in EU. From the University ” Kiril and Methodius ” around 30 students have graduated as interpretors . This means that Macedonia in the preparation of simultaneous interpreters “is not in the begining of that process but quite far from being ready”. Currently the number of translators and interpreters in Macedonia is not little, but experts say that, when the screening process starts and then negotiations for EU membership many more will be needed.
The EC said that finding simultaneous interpreters is difficult, and many countries do not realize that training of interpreters is their responsibility and that Brussels has no such personnel.

Interpreters for simultaneous translation employed in the EU should be highly qualified professionals with an university degree . For Macedonian translators to become simultaneous interpreters in the EU, they must know Macedonian perfectly and two other languages ​​that are spoken in the EU and their work would be translating from these two languages ​​to Macedonian . According to the EU’s standards it doesn’t matter if the candidates for translators have majored in law, political science or economics.At the after graduate studies at the University ” Kiril and Methodius in Skopje , currently represented languages are English, German, French and less Italian. Now even the Serbian language has been introduced.

From the dozen of accredited Macedonian translators working for EU, currently 7-8 are active translating for EU when necessary. The cost for translators are covered Union.Calculations from Brussels say that the cost of all translation in the EU institutions is less than one percent of the total budget of the Union , and when it is distributed to all residents in the EU , it turns out that every citizen of the Union the translation costs around two Euros per year.