The author examines the officially multilingual country of Belgium and shows how linguistic and cultural sensitivities influence the language competence of the population, attitudes to languages, and translation practices. The intricate bi- or multilingual context of Belgian politics has an impact on the way in which topics are presented and translated for the audience. He shows that in some cases, compromises between the members of the two main language communities can only be reached through an extremely well-balanced formulation containing varying points of emphasis in each language. Conflicts can occur not only on the basis of written texts, but also as a result of a TV programme to which people reacted differently depending on their linguistic (and thus national) affiliation.