Languages are the means we use to pass information, particularly economic information. The establishment of a multilingual European Community means that all the members not only have access to a great deal of economic information in languages other than their own; they must also disseminate information to members with a different mother tongue. The translation problem is that of passing this information across language boundaries.

This use of many languages within the Community produces two major economic losses:

would-be exporters of both goods and services come up against language barriers which manifest themselves as losses of time and money, and, as a consequence, they find themselves less competitive;

would-be users of imported goods and services find it harder to get information on new developments and to get hold of the most modern equipment, so that they, in their turn, become less competitive;

On the other hand, the fact of being the only large economic and industrial power in the world which has to solve this and similar problems could give Europe an important economic advantage. It has a unique opportunity to acquire translation skills from which it could derive direct benefit at the economic level: directly, by selling those skills and their use; indirectly, by overcoming more easily the language barriers with its external economic partners e.g. the USSR, China, the Arab world, Latin America, etc. It would also derive benefit at the social level by having learned to master problems that handicap integration. It could then apply those skills to other mono- and multilingual problems.

Thus, by developing industrial language skills for profit we will ensure long term world economic supremacy for Europe.