Those assignment offers will quickly add up. In addition to dozens of language combinations, TRAD23 will cover more than 1m pages per year — an estimated 1,024,000, in fact.
And since TRAD23 will last from March 1, 2024 – February 28, 2026, with two possible year-long extensions, the volume could easily triple or even quadruple.
The volume of French – English translation (2,000 pages) is just 4% of the work expected for English – French translation (50,000 pages).
Tens of thousands of pages per year will be translated from English into other EU languages. English – Greek promises the most work, at 65,000 pages, while English – Estonian, English – Dutch, and English – Irish round out those lots with 30,000 pages apiece.
The figures for English – Irish translation seem optimistic, considering the EU’s longstanding difficulties in recruiting Irish translators. In January 2022, a multimillion framework agreement did not award the lot for nearly 26,000 pages of English – and French – Irish translation to any tenderer.
Disparities Among Language Pairs
Much less work is expected for into English pairs, from a maximum 7,000 pages for Spanish – English to just 1,000 yearly for English translation from Latvian, Lithuanian, Slovenian, and Swedish, respectively.
For a sense of the disparity, the volume of French – English translation (2,000 pages) is just 4% of the work expected for English – French translation (50,000 pages).
The volume of work for non-English language combinations is on par with that for into English pairs.
Translation into French ranges from 3,000 pages (German and Italian) to 2,000 pages (Spanish). French is the source language for the remaining non-English language pairs, with targets including Dutch (2,000 pages), Danish, German, and Italian (1,000 pages each).
