Management

The Language Services depends upon the Office of the Vice-Rector for Teaching and Language Policy, currently led by the vice-rector Gemma Fonrodona. Its staff combines UB personnel with personnel from the Bosch i Gimpera Foundation, and freelance language specialists also participate in the Services’ activities. Apart from its internal budget, the Services receives an annual financial aid package from the Ministry of Innovation, Universities and Enterprise (DIUE) for language normalisation projects in the area of higher education (NORMA-AGAUR), as well as other grants.

Alongside the UB’s faculties and schools, the Language Services takes part in three of the university’s task forces: The Language Policy Committee, as delegated by the UB Governing Council, the Technical Committee on the Institutional Web, and the Network for Catalan Language Promotion. It also assumes technical responsibility for the language data of the UB-Catalan government program-based contract, and works with the Department of Catalan at the Faculty of Philology, with the UB School of Modern Languages, and in interuniversity projects.

The Language Services represents the university in various committees and organisms: the CUR Language Committee, the Technical Committee for Language in the Vives Universities Network, the Interuniversity Commission for Catalan Language Learning (CIFOLC), the Realiter Pan-Latin Network for Terminology and the RITerm Ibero-American Network for Terminology.

The origins of the UB Language Services go back to the university’s first institutionalised Catalan language policy initiatives and the ‘Cursos de Català del Rectorat’ (‘Catalan language courses organized by the Rector’s Office’), which were introduced in 1979 during the period when Antoni Maria Badia i Margarit was rector. Nine years later, in 1988, UB Rector Josep Maria Bricall founded what was then called the Catalan Language Service, with the objective of facilitating the normalisation of Catalan across the university. The Service’s first director and initial organizer was Maria Teresa Cabré Castellví, followed by Maria Àngels Massip, and then Esteve Clua. At the present time, the UB Language Services is directed by Conxa Planas.