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The European Commission is currently considering supporting the Maltese authorities with financial assistance to organise training courses for interpreters and translators, MaltaToday has learned. This was confirmed by Enlargement Commissioner Gunther Verhuegen, in a reply to a question by Green MEPs Raina Echerer and Eurig Wyn.
According to Echerer and Wyn, the shortage of translators and interpreters in the Maltese language presents a strong risk that Maltese parliamentarians and officials will not be able to use Maltese in any EU institution.
The MEPs argued that Malta should have been able to supply enough interpreters and translators in order for Maltese to be an official language of the European institutions, but that the current university course for such disciplines has only been activated in 2003 on a part-time basis, and has not provided a sufficient number of professionals.
Verhuegen said the organisation and content of training is the responsibility of the national authorities. He said the Commission had already had a number of contacts with the Maltese authorities and interested bodies over the last two years, emphasising the need for appropriate and timely preparations to ensure the supply of suitably qualified translators and particularly interpreters since there was no tradition of interpreting in Maltese.
“The severity of the shortage of qualified translators and interpreters in the Maltese language only became fully evident to the Commission when it launched a call for applications mid-2003. The limited number of qualified applications received gave concrete evidence of this shortcoming, obviously related to the small size of the Maltese population. At the same time, the Commission undertook to set up in Malta a translation field office in order to assist the Maltese authorities in finding a solution to this problem,” Verheugen said.
“However the Commission's experience shows that these courses need to be organised carefully and to full professional standards if the trained translators and interpreters are to have the qualifications required by EU institutions. The Commission is working with the Maltese authorities to ensure this outcome as quickly as possible.”
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