A Tale of Eight Countries or the EU Council Presidency Translator in Retrospect

In this paper, we describe the development of the EU Council Presidency Translator, a machine translation solution first introduced during the EU Council Presidency of Latvia. We further analyze how the EU Council Presidency Translator has been used across seven presiding member states starting from H2’2017 onwards. Our findings show that usage of different translation tools has depended on the technological readiness level of the presiding member state. Nevertheless, Presidency Translator usage statistics indicated an upwards trend in the volume of words translated monthly, suggesting increasing popularity of the machine translation based solution. Our analysis further indicates that the machine translation services are used continuously after the periods of presidencies they were developed for conclude. These findings suggest the usefulness of the Presidency Translator above and beyond the needs of the period of the presidency.