Languages are carriers of information, in particular economical information. The creation of a single European market requires that all partners in economic activities can have access to information available in other languages than their own. Conversely, they must be able to communicate information to people speaking only foreign languages. This is the problem of transferring information between languages, known as translation.

The multitude of languages has a doubly negative effect on the European economic agents:

as producers of goods and services, they meet additional obstacles to exportation in the form of loss of time and money. This makes them less competitive.

as consumers of goods and services, it is harder for them to keep informed on the most recent technical developments and to get the most modern equipment. This makes them technologically backward, and once more, less competitive.

On the other hand, being the only economic and industrial block in the world having to find a solution to these problems may also give Europe a considerable economic advantage: It has a unique opportunity to acquire a know-how in the area of language processing. This will be useful in the economic sphere (directly by selling the know-how; indirectly by more easily overcoming other linguistic barriers to external economic partners: USSR, China, the Arab world, Latin America, etc.) and in the social sphere (using the experiences for the integration of disabled, etc.), in the frame of monolingual as well as multilingual activities.

The development of a sound and profitable language industry ensures Europe's world leadership in the long run.