How do you write an article in 22 languages about the very same subject without translating it ?

Not that we have anything against translation nor translators. They are the salt of the European Parliament good way of working. Since it is a fundamental right to run for an election whatever your skills, experience or knowledge might be, you cannot ask to the Members to be fluent in foreign languages. Hence the essential needs for translation, so that your chosen ones can read, work, amend, debate and vote in their mother tongue. 

But for our own editorial needs, translation wouldn’t do the job. We are a team of writers devoted to every street guys. We do our best to write in a comprehensive language, free of eurojargon, with its vitality, its charm, its colloquial ways of informing about the acts and decisions of the Parliament. All that flavour is sometimes lost in translation.

Also, when composing the team, we wanted as much as possible people from the journalism or communication fields. We work as closely as possible as a news agency would do. This requires specific profile with many talents – but adding the translating skills to the check list would have been asking for too much. 

So we brainstormed…

After some gallons of coffee, we came up with the idea of the synopsis. The synopsis is what the French having studied in Science-Pô would call “un plan détaillé”. It is a detailed draft of the story, a skeleton well structured, which provides all facts, quotes, figures, examples. It is written in a basic English to be understood by everyone. It is almost always written by two editors (it provides a second pair of eyes to challenge the structure) and it should be no longer than two pages. Before it is sent to the rest of the team, the synopsis is reviewed (and formally “approved”) by Steve, the Boss-of-the-pop, and sometimes revised by some of our colleagues from the Press Room who cover the Committees. We call them the “specialists” because they follow deeply all legislative matters and they are the best to check the facts and the political positions.

From the synopsis, the editors write. In their language. They stick to the synopsis but they add the flavor, the spices, the taste of the final text. All our stories are the same in 22 languages but none of them are identical. Our writers have their style, even their voice. For example, Gaëlle’s writings (she’s our French editor), sound like my eldest sister explaining me the European affairs. Without the naughty comments about my fashion tastes.

And we still brainstorm

Synopses belong to the list of most debated subjects in our staff meetings. Despite our common rules, the fact that we produce two to three of them every day lead to different perspectives. Different schools in the way we perform the task. Some prefers long (too long ?) and very well detailed synopses. Some write in their best English, which can be gratifying but also painful for others. Some editors have a touch for extremely short and bullet-points style synopsis – which others hate because they need more information to feed their prose with more details. That’s what we call diversity.

So we discuss, we exchange, we improve, we criticise - oh, and we complain a lot too. We even have theories explaining the different levels of quality in our synopses (one of them puts the blame on Steve but don’t tell him).

But we stick to the synopsis because there is no better way, to this date, to ensure a good European coverage of the Parliament’s news with the same pieces of information for 22 languages and 27 countries.

Next time you meet an editor, ask him or her about his/her favorite synopsis. And about the worst ones he had to write from lately. And don’t forget to change the subject after a while, after all, all those chats about works can be sooo dreadful.