Languages comprise the medium of information, especially that of economic information. The creation of a single European market means that all the partners involved in economic activities will have to have access to the information at their disposal which is in languages other than their own, and that conversely they will have to give out information destined for people who do not speak their language. This is the problem of transferring information between languages, otherwise called translation.

More precisely, the negative economic impact of multilingualism is twofold for European economic businesspeople.

in their capacity as producers of goods and services they encounter extra obstacles when wishing to export goods, the result of which is lost time and money, and consequently a loss of competitiveness.

in their capacity as consumers of goods and services they suffer increased difficulties in keeping themselves informed of technical developments and in obtaining the latest equipment, which results in being behind with technology and, once again, a loss of competitiveness.

On the other hand, the fact of being the only important economic and industrial group in the world to find a solution to such problems could give Europe a considerable economic advantage: now it has a unique opportunity to acquire precious know-how in the domain of language processing, which it could put to good use in economic planning (directly by selling its experience and achievements; indirectly by overcoming linguistic barriers more easily than anyone else in its relations with external economic partners: the USSR, China, the Arab world, Latin America, etc.) and in social planning (in applying its experience to the integration of the handicapped, and so on), within the scope of both mono- and multilingual activities.

The development of healthy and profitable language industries would assure a more long term world supremacy for Europe.