Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-10-22-Speech-1-131"
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"en.20071022.15.1-131"2
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"Madam President, I rise to propose, on behalf of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs, that we change the way in which we in this Parliament keep a record of our debates. We are all familiar with the verbatim report that we get the day after the debates, with each speaker’s speech rendered in their own language. That will continue as now. There will be no change to the record, in the original language, of what everybody has said.
What the Committee on Constitutional Affairs is proposing is to change the way in which we preserve the multilingual record of our debates. Instead of gradually translating the debates and then, some months later, having a full written translated record in every language, we propose a switch to a system whereby the debates are electronically preserved and where any citizen can access them through the internet the very next day and see a visual record of the debate, with the soundtracks for every single language, preserved from the interpretation booths. This will provide a more lively form of access to the debates than just a dry text. It will be available immediately, rather than several months later.
I must confess that I was myself initially rather sceptical of this idea. I always thought that keeping a full paper record of what everyone said, which was archived and which people could look at for many years to come, was an inherent part of being a parliament. However, on reflection, and having listened to the arguments, I am now convinced that we can keep that multilingual access, albeit in a new form.
The problem with the old system is that the translations not only cost a substantial amount of money but also, more importantly, are only available several months later. At the moment, they are placed on the web, where they are available electronically. They are no longer printed in the Official Journal. Very few people access them, look them up or use them, because of the time lag. With this new system of preserving the debates, on ‘web television’ if you like, they will be available the very next day, when they still have political immediacy and when people are still interested in them.
We were also worried that historians, who, for all kinds of research reasons, tend to look back at parliamentary debates long after we have forgotten them, might be upset that we would no longer have a printed written version but only a visual multilingual version. We wrote to various associations of historians and others, and to my surprise they replied that they, too, thought it would be much more interesting to have a more lively record than just the printed text in translation. Viewing a debate on a monitor gives you the flavour of that debate. You can see the body language of the speakers, and you get much more than by just reading a dry text.
Nonetheless, our report proposes a number of safeguards. Firstly, the plurilingual verbatim report that we already get the next day will continue. It will be there in all the original languages, as before. Secondly, any Member of this Parliament will have the guaranteed right to request a translation, if he or she needs it for his or her political work. The translation of any speech must be made rapidly available to the requesting Member. Thirdly, we provide that the Bureau may decide to ask for a written translation of a particularly important debate, which will then still be published in written form in every language. Fourthly, when extra language versions are available anyway, because they happen to have been translated – for instance, for a formal sitting at which a head of state is speaking, and courtesy translations have been provided – they too will be placed on Parliament’s website. Therefore, when translations are available in other languages, we will make use of them. Finally, we ask the Bureau to look at technological developments to see if, for instance, in the future, computer translations can provide an extra tool, giving at least a rough idea of what was said in debates.
In conclusion, this is a fair proposal whose advantages outweigh the disadvantages. It is not just a matter of costs; it is also about being a modern parliament and making our debates accessible much more rapidly, in a form which is much more useful."@en1
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