The EU initially invested heavily in the development of machine translation, but has essentially abandoned the project. As a result, translation and interpretation increasingly proceed in two steps, from a lesser-used language to half a dozen “relay” languages, and from those into other, smaller languages.
欧盟起初在机器翻译上投入巨资，但最终放弃了这一计划。其结果是笔译和口译越来越倾向于以“两步走”的方式进行。先从一种较为不常用的语言翻译成十数种“接力”语言，然后再以此为基础，翻译成更小的语种。这能够节省资源，但它也意味着信息的大量流失。