Introduction

This chapter offers an overview of the main objects of the book, namely the EU’s language and translation regimes, its de jure multilingualism around 24 official languages, its de facto monolingualism around English (in the wake of Brexit), as well as its effacement of the boundaries between translations and originals. EU multilingualism is briefly illustrated with the help of some general statistics, along with anecdotal information stemming from the author’s own multilingual background. The transdisciplinary character of the book is revealed: philosophy of language, applied linguistics and sociolinguistics, translation studies and political theory converge – and often diverge – in a work that does not attempt to level their differences. Indeed, through a deconstructive lens, the objective is rather to reveal the moments of aporia and to unpick the normative, theoretical and epistemological paradoxes at the heart of the EU’s tension between unity and multiplicity regarding language and translation.