BBC NEWS | Europe | 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 190 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."
Follow up post at Languagehat. One possible outcome of all this is that Europe will become the world leader in translation services. Another is that the EU will go down in flames when translation costs soar beyond its means. More: "My theory, which is mine, is that the best way to deal with this problem would be to set up a hereditary caste/guild of translators with branches in each EU country. Childrens born into the guild would be circulated around guild-run boarding schools in a suitable selection of countries to acquire native speaker aptitude while the acquiring is good. "