Four years after the Conference on the Future of Europe, citizens’ panels have become a regular tool for democratic participation, bringing together hundreds of participants who are able to express themselves in the 24 official languages of the European Union. A challenge made possible thanks to the important but often unnoticed work of the European Commission’s interpretation services. What lessons can be drawn since 2022, and what new challenges do interpreters face today? We spoke to Colin Scicluna, Deputy Director-General at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Interpretation (SCIC), for whom multilingualism and interpretation are essential to bringing democracy to life.
Missions Publiques. The Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFE) presented an unprecedented challenge for interpreting services. Looking back, what would you say was the most significant lesson learned from this experience? And in what ways have you drawn on it in your work at SCIC today?
Colin Scicluna. This experience has given me a valuable insight into this world and what goes on behind the scenes. The multilingual aspect of the Conference was organised in various ways, partly by the European Commission and partly by the European Parliament. For the citizens’ panels, interpretation was largely the responsibility of the Commission, whilst for the plenary sessions, held in Strasbourg, interpretation was mainly provided by the European Parliament.
One of the most important aspects of the Conference was its multilingual nature. Ordinary citizens, unaccustomed to navigating the political sphere or speaking in public, were called upon to achieve something quite extraordinary. The fact that they were able to speak and debate in their own language was fundamental. If we had restricted the Conference to one, two or three languages, the experience would have been very different, as it would have excluded a large section of the population who would not have been able to make their voices heard, leaving the floor to an elite. Which, fundamentally, is not democratic.
I was recently at an event in an EU member state dedicated to multilingualism and democracy, and that experience reminded me of just how important these issues remain. I spoke with students aged 14 to 18 and asked how many of them could speak a language other than their mother tongue. Fewer than half said they could. There are still many regions in Europe where people do not have the opportunity to learn other languages, or do not feel comfortable or confident expressing themselves in other languages. For that reason, multilingualism was one of the most essential dimensions of the Conference and one of its most distinctive features, allowing everyone to participate fully, without being held back by a language barrier.
On a personal level, one of the things I took away from this experience was just how challenging it was. We had interpreters for the formal sessions, but exchanges also took place in more informal moments. In those spaces, the Common Secretariat itself sometimes had to step in to facilitate dialogue between participants. We managed to bring together people speaking several languages and to provide spontaneous informal interpretation so that those who otherwise would not have been able to take part could do so fully.
More broadly, I think we sometimes underestimate the work behind this kind of event and the results it achieves. We often forget the time devoted to preparing, planning and coordinating a project of such scale. An exercise like this is essential to keeping democracy alive, but it relies on significant means, resources and organisation. None of this happens naturally or automatically. It is a major collective effort whose value is not always fully recognized.
"Multilingualism is not an obstacle to deliberation. It is the deliberative framework that must learn to adapt to a multilingual environment
Colin Scicluna
Deputy Director-General at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Interpretation (SCIC)
Missions Publiques. What are the practical differences between a consultation conducted in a single language and a multilingual consultation on this scale? How do interpreters ensure the quality of deliberation? And ultimately, what does this linguistic diversity bring to the process, and what challenges might it pose?
Colin Scicluna. Linguistic diversity shapes the deliberative process at the European level, but its effects go far beyond deliberation itself. What we consistently hear is that participants feel more European, and for some, it is the first time they have truly experienced that feeling. For many, these panels represent the first opportunity to cross borders, to meet people from other countries and genuinely exchange with them. In citizens’ panels, participants really get to know one another across languages and cultures. One of the deepest effects of deliberative processes is precisely this strengthened sense of citizenship, whether national, local, or European. People can usually explain what it means to be French, or to be Parisian. But ask them what it means to be European, and even those who live and work daily within European institutions often struggle to articulate it. These experiences help participants perceive and feel that identity in a tangible way, partly through their own language and partly through hearing others speak theirs. Multilingualism therefore not only shapes the quality of deliberation, but also contributes, more deeply, to the building of a shared European identity.
On Europe Day, 9 May, we organise an open day at the European Commission. Among the activities on offer, visitors could enter interpretation booths and experience interpreters at work in real time. The initiative was a great success and one of the busiest spots of the day. I gave some closing remarks in my language, Maltese. I saw some people removing one earpiece, not because they no longer wished to follow, but because they wanted to hear and discover a language they had never encountered before. It was a very moving moment for me. The same applies to languages such as Estonian, Latvian or Slovene, which are rarely heard beyond their borders and often spark genuine curiosity in those who discover them. We see the same effect in citizens’ panels: we come from very different countries and often think we are very far apart, yet as the exchanges unfold, it becomes clear that we are not as different as we might have thought.
As for interpreters, working across multiple languages and contexts is an integral part of their profession. Most master several language combinations, which gives the interpretation system a great deal of flexibility. There are nevertheless situations where direct interpretation is not possible. When moving, for example, from Maltese to Finnish, it is rare to find an interpreter able to handle that transition in a single step. This is precisely where relay interpretation comes in: one interpreter works from Maltese into a pivot language, usually English or French, before a second takes over and renders the message into Finnish, or whichever language is required. More recently, within citizens’ panels, we have encouraged interpreters to mix with participants, get to know them, and invite them into the booths to show them what goes on behind the scenes. We have even heard of friendships forming as a result of these exchanges.
There are still doubts about the ability of deliberative processes to function in a multilingual environment. Some argue that beyond two or three languages, as in Belgium, Canada or Switzerland, it becomes impractical. I believe we have demonstrated otherwise, particularly during the Conference on the Future of Europe. Of course, this comes at a cost in time, as interpretation naturally slows exchanges and slightly reduces the time available for deliberation. But our partners have gradually refined their methodology to limit this impact and make the most of every moment of exchange. Ultimately, the conclusion is clear: multilingualism is not an obstacle to deliberation. It is the deliberative framework that must learn to adapt to a multilingual environment.
Missions Publiques. What are the main challenges you face today? Artificial intelligence is profoundly transforming the fields of translation and interpreting. How is your service adapting to these changes? And more broadly, how do you see the future of the interpreting profession?
Colin Scicluna. Interpreting services today face several challenges. One of them is rising costs and increasing competition from other providers, some of whom offer lower-quality services. In official contexts, it is often said that most diplomats and delegates can exchange in several languages, and that a fully multilingual system with a large team of interpreters is therefore unnecessary. That is not the case. When it comes to negotiating particularly sensitive issues, participants want to be able to express themselves in their own language and to have the guarantee of interpretation of the highest quality, secure and confidential.
The second challenge is technological. Many people mistakenly believe that artificial intelligence will replace human interpreters very soon. That is not my view, certainly not in the near future. For certain types of meetings where delegates read prepared speeches, technology can indeed be a valuable aid. But in highly sensitive or confidential negotiations, or when dealing with speakers whose discourse is very spontaneous and unstructured, something I have often observed in citizens’ panels, artificial intelligence quickly reaches its limits. When faced with someone who lacks structure, who moves from one topic to another or expresses themselves unclearly, it quickly gets lost.
This is precisely where the human dimension remains irreplaceable. The ability to read body language and to focus fully on the individual is essential. Interpretation also has an almost theatrical dimension: the interpreter must, to some extent, embody the person they are interpreting. If a speaker becomes animated, raises their voice or uses humour, the interpreter must convey the same energy and emotion. This is a challenge that technology is certainly not yet able to meet.
Some interpreters feel a degree of concern about these developments, and the profession will undoubtedly evolve. But we prefer to see technology as a tool that serves human interpreters rather than replaces them. Artificial intelligence can be useful when prepared texts are available. Interpreters always appreciate receiving speeches in advance, and AI tools can help translate them instantly as support. There are also terminology databases. In very technical meetings, such as fisheries negotiations where species have different names across languages, these tools help provide the right terminology and support the interpreter.
Speech recognition and speech synthesis technologies can also transfer content from one language to another, but their quality is not yet sufficiently reliable or consistent. They can be used, provided a human interpreter supervises and validates the output. One of the more insidious problems linked to advances in artificial intelligence is that it is becoming increasingly capable of making mistakes convincingly. When a sentence is incoherent or clearly wrong, the error is obvious. But when it appears correct while being factually inaccurate, the risk is far greater, as it may go unnoticed.
To conclude, translation and interpretation are not the same thing. Artificial intelligence can translate words, but it cannot yet read a silence, detect irony, or perceive the emotion behind a sentence. That is precisely where the richness of languages and cultures lies, and that is also where its limits remain.
