There are not a whole lot, you will not be surprised to hear, of Latvians who speak Greek, or Bulgarians well versed in Portuguese. Or Finns capable of conversing in Slovenian. Admittedly, on a recent visit to Turkey my official guide confessed she was about to marry a Czech, but there can be few of her compatriots with an equal ability to cross that particular linguistic divide. Certainly not enough to provide simultaneous interpretation for every meeting of the European Parliament or of EU ministers and national officials.
Yet this is the requirement that faces the European Union with enlargement in a few short years. Put at its most graphic, the number of translation combinations will rise with nine new languages from the current 110 to 380. A system already groaning under pressure and absorbing one-third of the wages bill of the institutions would come grinding to a halt.
"Indeed," you will respond, "but surely this is being dealt with by that group you keep writing about, the Inter-Governmental Conference (IGC). It has, after all, been charged with preparing the EU structures for an eventual membership of 28."
'Fraid not. This is the subject that dare not speak its name, either in the IGC or between ministers. Indeed, such was the anger of Berlin last year at the absence of German translation facilities at informal Finnish presidency meetings that they boycotted several of them. Try talking about the language regime of the EU as a whole and you don't get past first base.
And there is no question of simply freezing the current regime. Secondclass status would not be on for new member-states. While expecting diplomats or officials of the Union to speak other languages may be acceptable, MEPs argue that every member must have the right to address Parliament in his or her own language.
The alternatives to the status quo are either an increase in the number of working languages from the current 11 or radically cutting back to three or five, creating six and 20 language combinations respectively. In the case of the more favoured three-language regime, that means certainly English and French - the current working languages among officials in the institutions - and probably German.
But that would make the Italians and the Spaniards deeply unhappy and Belgium's Flemish leaders would go ballistic at a privileged status for hated French. And what about that incoming giant, Poland?
English has come to rival the traditional language of diplomacy, French, in the workings of the Commission. Last year for the first time more documents were created in English than French, and within the EU roughly 63 million speak each as a first language. But with 90 per cent of secondary school students learning English, more than twice as many as French, English eclipses the latter as a second language.
Following unification, some 90 million EU citizens speak German as a first language.
Asger Ousager, a Danish philospher, argues in the current issue of the European Voice for a new spirit of compromise and willingness to embrace the three-language model. Those, for example, who find French unacceptable can use one of the other two as a second language, he says.
And where a country elects an MEP who does not speak one of the three, he argues, it should be up to that state to provide translators and interpreters so that he or she can be understood.
It should be easy for Ireland to take a somewhat detached view of the argument. We speak English and have already forgone the use of our first national language in-the-day to day workings of the Union (though post-Amsterdam it is possible to correspond with the institutions in Irish). Why would others not take a similar view? In EFTA, for example, there is a one-language regime - English - a language which is not that of any of its member-states.
But any decision has to be taken by unanimity and woe betide any politician who consents to the Union dispensing with his language.
Some of the problems can be eased pragmatically, Collette Flesch, the former head of the Translation Service, believes. Ringing round member-states ahead of meetings of officials can in practice reduce the number of interpreters needed to a core two or three languages as long as it is never suggested that a member-state does not have a right to full interpretation.
And Parliament has also been forced by necessity - a shortage of interpreters - to evolve a system of double interpretation which means speeches are translated first to a hub language, English, French or German, and then again into the language of the MEP.
The effects are often bizarre - a joke ripples around the chamber in strange waves - but it dramatically cuts the numbers of interpreters required and particularly those able to cope with the minority combinations. Technology can help too, although, to date, with translation rather than interpretation. Considerable progress has been made in the computerised translation of technical documents where the language and formulations are repetitive. But it can produce very strange results and is not acceptable for legally binding documents.
Ultimately, however, as Mr Ousager argues, we will have to bite the bullet.
