The purpose of this booklet is to give an account of one of the worlds’ largest translation services, the Directorate-General for Translation of the European Commission. The DGT, as it is known for short, works in all the official languages of the European Union and, as new countries join the EU, their languages are added to the number. The authors ask themselves why the Union needs such a complicated system, instead of using just a couple of languages as other international organisations.