The Drongo Language festival was held in Nijmegen, NL on 9-10 November and the Language Show in London, UK on 9-11 November. Our presence at these events was thanks to great cooperation by the linguistic services of the EU institutions and the EU representations in the respective countries.
Two of our interpreters from the English unit made presentations with other EU colleagues to big crowds in London about the importance of learning languages and how to work as a linguist at/for the EU. Over the three days, there was a constant stream of people at the stand interested in EU affairs, as well as huge queues throughout the day to try interpretation in a booth! Colleagues in London said: “It felt like we all did some really positive and important outreach during this difficult period for British linguists and convinced pro-Europeans in the UK.” We also had a social media campaign involving all the EU representations in the UK with a special video message from our Director General Florika Fink-Hooijer. There were also many visitors to the EU stand at the Drongo Language festival, as well as a workshop multilingualism in the European institutions with Dominique Stevens who considers that “the workshop on was very well attended, with a lot of questions from the public. In general, it was interesting to see that the sector is broadly confronted with the same challenges we see here in SCIC (new technologies, generation switch), and that professionals in this sector face these challenges with optimism.”