Translating is EU's new boom industry
When 10 new countries join the European Union on 1 May, they bring with them an extra nine languages to add to the EU's existing 11.
Translators, builders and electronics suppliers are busy ahead of 1 May
There could even be 10 new tongues, for if Greek and Turkish Cypriots vote for reunification before then, Turkish will become the EU's 21st language.
How will it cope? Even with 20, Europe's tower of Babel is creaking.
Twenty languages gives a total of 380 possible combinations (English-German, French-Czech, Finnish-Portuguese, etc), and finding any human being who speaks, for example, both Greek and Estonian or Slovene and Lithuanian is well-nigh impossible.
To get round this problem, the parliament will use much more "relay translation", where a speech is interpreted first into one language and then into another - and perhaps into a fourth or fifth.
The European Commission already has 1,300 translators, who process 1.5 million pages a year in the EU's 11 languages.
In two years that is expected to rise to almost 2.5 million pages - and the staff, based in two enormous buildings in Brussels and Luxembourg, will almost double in size to cope with the output.
The cost will rise from roughly 550 million euros today to over 800 million euros after enlargement. Is it worth it?
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"Translation costs less than 2 euros per citizen, so it is less than a cup of coffee or a ticket to the cinema," he says.
"I think it's worth it because it is part of democracy.