European Commission Directorate-General for Translation

The European Commission's in-house translation service

The Directorate-General for Translation (DG Translation) translates texts for the European Commission — into and out of the EU's 24 official languages, and a few others when needed. We deal exclusively with written texts. The spoken word is interpreted into other languages by our colleagues in DG Interpretation.

With a staff of around 2 500 people, DG Translation is one of the largest translation services in the world. We are based in Brussels and Luxembourg, with small outposts in other EU countries.

Translating for Europe

Our main function is to:

• translate laws, policy papers, reports, correspondence and other written texts drafted by or sent to the Commission
• help the Commission communicate with the public in all EU official languages
• edit original documents drafted by Commission authors, who routinely write in languages other than their own
• advise other Commission departments on linguistic matters and on managing multilingual websites.