29 Amendments of Dominique BILDE related to 2018/2028(INI)
Amendment 13 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital B
Recital B
B. whereas there are 24 official languages and more than 60 national and regional languages in the European Union; whereas multilingualism presents one of the greatest assets of cultural diversity in Europe and, at the same time, one of the most significant challenges for the creation of a truly integrated EUmakes optimal mobility of people within the EU impossible, particularly as regards professional mobility;
Amendment 20 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital C
Recital C
C. whereas multilingualism comes under the scope of a series of EU policy areas, including culture, lifelong learning, employment, social inclusion, competitiveness, youth, civil society, research and media; whereas more attention needs to be paid to removing barriers to, in which EU action complements the action of the Member States; whereas intercultural and interlinguistic dialogue is essential;
Amendment 29 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital E
Recital E
E. whereas fulfillingment of the Barcelona objective of enabling citizens to communicate well in their mother tongue plus two other languages is far from satisfactory, even if meeting that objective would give people more opportunities to access culture and to participate as citizens; whereas additional means and tools, especially those provided by language technologies, are key to managing European multilingualism properlyincluding simultaneous translation technologies, can facilitate the movement of goods, services and capital within the EU but cannot replace command of languages, which will always be essential for people to assimilate into the society of another country and to integrate into that country's labour market;
Amendment 33 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital E a (new)
Recital E a (new)
Ea. whereas since the Barcelona objectives were drawn up in 2002, bilingualism has not really advanced in Europe, which remains divided between countries where the population is strongly bilingual or multilingual, notably Luxembourg and certain Scandinavian countries, and other highly monolingual countries, such as France, where even command of English is stagnating, and whereas multilingualism cannot be a universal objective, but must be tailored to the needs, especially the professional needs, of the population of each Member State;
Amendment 35 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital E b (new)
Recital E b (new)
Eb. whereas under the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, in particular Articles 165 and 166 thereof, the Member States are responsible for educational policy, particularly as regards their language strategies, and whereas for their own political or trade reasons they may choose to promote the learning of certain foreign languages, including certain non-EU languages, such as Japanese, Mandarin or Russian, and whereas, for that reason, the language policy of the Member States cannot have as its primary objective the strengthening of European cohesion and the single market;
Amendment 36 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital E c (new)
Recital E c (new)
Ec. whereas in 2013 the British Council published a study on language learning in the United Kingdom, which highlighted the need to develop the learning of certain globally important languages, including Mandarin, Japanese and Russian, and whereas the development of the learning of these languages is particularly important for the Member States politically, strategically and economically but will necessarily compete with the learning of EU languages;
Amendment 37 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital F
Recital F
F. whereas the fast pace of development in language technologies offers new opportunities for digital communication in all European and non- European languages, but whereas the level of development of these language technologies is not sufficient to cover all aspects of human communication and certainly cannot replace the effective learning of a foreign languages;
Amendment 42 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital G
Recital G
G. whereas the common European values of cooperation, solidarity, recognition and respect should mean that all citizens have full and equal access to the most needed and most widespread new technologies, which would improve European cohesiveness and wellbeing;
Amendment 45 #
Motion for a resolution
Recital H
Recital H
H. whereas the emergence ofnew methods such as deep learning, based on increased computational power and access to vast amounts of data, are making language technologies a real solution forrequire substantial further development to be able to understand complex information, but can nevertheless help to overcominge language barriers;
Amendment 47 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 1
1. Regrets that in Europe there is currently a widening technology gap between well-resourced languages and less-resourced languages, whether the latter are official, co-official or nonco-official in the EU; whereas some of the latter may already be facing digital extinction; notes that the prevalence of English as a lingua franca, particularly in the European institutions, contributes to the lack of representation of all other languages, even when such dominance is no longer justified, especially in the light of the United Kingdom's imminent exit from the European Union;
Amendment 51 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 2
Paragraph 2
2. Stresses that European lesser-used languages are significantly disadvantaged owing to an acute lack of tools and resources and the natural trend of the internet to favour languages with the largest number of readers worldwide, as well as a lack of researchers with the necessary technological skills, despite the fact that speakers of these languages gain the most from language technologies;
Amendment 55 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3
Paragraph 3
3. Notes the deepening digital divide between widely-used and lesser-used languages, and draws attention, given the increasing digitalisation of European society, for example in public service provision, to the rights and access issues that this will lead to, particularly for the elderly and those on low incomes; stresses the need for the European institutions to translate all the information they make available online into all the official languages of the EU, or at least into the three working languages;
Amendment 61 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 3 a (new)
Paragraph 3 a (new)
3a. Stresses that the predominance on the internet of certain languages to the detriment of others also results from a natural phenomenon, as writing content in certain languages spoken by a large number of users worldwide ensures greater visibility on the internet, particularly for commercial purposes;
Amendment 63 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 4
Paragraph 4
4. Notes that while Europe has a strong scientific base in language engineering and technology, the market is currently dominated by non-European actors, and that this may not be suitable for addressing the specific needs of a multilingual Europe; notes, furthermore, that progress in language technologies is currently too slow to meet the immediate needs of multilingualism in Europe;
Amendment 71 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 8
Paragraph 8
8. Recommends that in order to raise the profile of language technologies in Europe, the Commission should allocate the area of multilingualism to the portfolio of a Commissioner, given the importance of linguistic diversity for the future of Europe; recalls, however, that the promotion of multilingualism in Europe cannot impinge on the exclusive competence of the Member States in the area of language policy, in particular as regards the legal status and learning of minority and/or regional languages in their public education systems and their use in public services and administrations;
Amendment 79 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 9
Paragraph 9
9. Encourages those Member States that have already developed their own successful policy strategies in the field of language technologies to share their experiences and good practices in order to help other national and regional authorities develop their own strategies;
Amendment 85 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 10
Paragraph 10
10. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to define the minimum language resources, such as lexicons, speech records, translation memories, corpora and encyclopaedic contents, that all official or co-official European languages should possess in order to avoid digital extinction;
Amendment 96 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 11
Paragraph 11
11. Calls on the Commission to establish a large-scale, long-term funding programme for research and development and innovation, based on existing European programmes, with a view to developing innovative technologies and services and contributing to the reduction of the technology gap between European languages;
Amendment 97 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 12
Paragraph 12
12. Believes that specific programmes within current funding schemes such as Horizon 2020, as well as successor funding programmes, should boost long-term basic research as well as knowledge and technology transfer between countries and regionMember States;
Amendment 100 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 13
Paragraph 13
13. Recommends the creation of a European language technology platform with representatives from all official or co- official European languages that enables the sharing of language technology-related resources;
Amendment 102 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 14
Paragraph 14
14. Recommends the extension of the EU-funded Digital Language Diversity Project to cover research into the digital needs of all official or co-official European lesser-used languages, so as to address the digital divide issue and help prepare these languages for a digital future;
Amendment 105 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 15
Paragraph 15
15. Recommends a pan-European survey on the status of language technologies and resources for all official or co-official European languages;
Amendment 109 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 16
Paragraph 16
16. Believes that owing to the current situation whereby non-European actors dominate the market in language technologies, European education policies should aim at retaining talent in Europe, which means offering rewarding career prospects for European researchers in these fields, should analyse the current educational needs related to language technology, and should raise awareness among schoolchildren and students of the career opportunities in the language technology industry;
Amendment 111 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 16 a (new)
Paragraph 16 a (new)
16a. Stresses that language technologies will have a major impact on the translation and interpreting professions, which will need to offer added value over and above simple formal translation, that this professional transition will need to be managed by the public authorities and professional organisations and that, in particular, degree courses should be offered which meet these new requirements and ongoing training should possibly be established;
Amendment 113 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 17
Paragraph 17
17. Proposes that the Commission and Member States promote, as far as possible and financially feasible, the use of language technologies within cultural and educational exchanges between European citizens such as Erasmus+, with the aim of reducing the barriers that linguistic diversity can pose to intercultural dialogue, especially in written and audiovisual expression; points out, nevertheless, that language technologies, at their current state of development, cannot replace the effective learning of foreign languages, which remains a prerequisite for integrating socially and professionally into the societies of the Member States;
Amendment 120 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 18
Paragraph 18
18. Recommends that Member States develop digital literacy programmes and introduce language technology training and tools in the curricula of their schools, universities and vocational colleges, where justified by the course concerned;
Amendment 125 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 19
Paragraph 19
19. Underlines the need to foster and support the development of investment instruments and accelerator programmes that aim at increasing the use of language technologies in the cultural and creative sector, especially targeting less-resourced communitiofficial or co-official European languages and encouraging the development of language technology capacities in areas where the sector is weaker;
Amendment 126 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 20
Paragraph 20
20. Calls on the EU institutions to raise awareness of the benefits for companies, public bodies and citizens of the availability of online services, content and products in multiple languages, including official or co-official European lesser- used languages, with a view to overcoming language barriers and to the preservation of the cultural heritage of language communities;
Amendment 132 #
Motion for a resolution
Paragraph 21
Paragraph 21
21. Calls on administrations at all levels to improve access to online services and information in different languagesofficial or co-official languages of the country concerned, and to use already existing language technology such as machine translation, speech recognition and text-to-speech, in order to improve the accessibility of those services;