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Statistics released today by the country's major language services company showed that in California in 2004 Cantonese bumped Mandarin from among the five languages that more than 90 health care facilities most often requested for interpretation. Arizona-based CyraCom International, which provides over-the-phone interpretation services in 150-plus languages to more than 700 hospitals nationwide, reported that Spanish was again the language most requested by its California clients. Vietnamese was second, Russian third, Korean fourth (but almost tied with Russian), and Cantonese fifth. In 2003, Russian was a clear third, and Mandarin was fifth. Moreover, the number of languages requested in 2004 increased to 97 from 79 in 2003, a 23% increase. According to the company, a full 39% of California's population speaks a language other than English at home; and…

On a similar note, the European Union's bill for translation will have to balloon by nearly 60% to over 1 billion euros a year to prevent the bloc from turning into a Tower of Babel after its eastward enlargement, according to the European Commission in Brussels. The EC said the annual cost of written translation was expected to grow to 807 million euros in the next few years from 549 million in 2003, when the Commission translated a staggering 1.3 million pages of information. Expenditure for oral interpretation of 50-60 meetings held each day in Brussels is forecast to increase to 238 million euros a year from 105 million euros once the EU's expansion to 25 from 15 members last May is fully digested, it said. The EU executive said the soaring bill was the price for ensuring a level playing field for all the bloc's citizens, whose number grew to 453 million from 375 million. The EU's total budget is 105 billion euros this year, or about 1 percent of the bloc's gross national income. The number of official languages increased to 20 from 11 with the EU's enlargement into mainly ex-communist eastern Europe. Bulgaria and Romania are set to join in 2007 or 2008, bringing two more languages into the EU. Enlargement has become a bonanza for interpreters, the Commission's figures showed, with 80 additional linguists needed per new language to keep all the EU institutions up to speed. The EC said it had the biggest problem with Maltese, spoken by just 350,000 people living in the Mediterranean island. The 2003 competition for Maltese interpreters yielded no successful candidates.

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