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Matthew Vella
The achievement of Maltese as a national language by the team headed by Richard Cachia Caruana continues to resonate in the ears of the thousands of PN supporters who danced to the music of Iva Malta fl-Ewropa. But now, the status of Maltese as an official EU language has taken a step backwards with the Nationalist government asking for a three-year derogation on translating EU legislation. The derogation, quietly implemented, effectively means that before May 2007, not all acts, including judgements of the European Court of Justice will be translated into our mother tongue.
After all the euphoria over Maltese being accepted as a EU language, the government has suddenly discovered that it is not a prority.
Barely twenty-four hours into the new European adventure when fireworks and lasers were beaming St Angelo into life as thousands celebrated accession, the Council of Ministers issued a regulation stating that not all EU documents would be translated in Maltese, due to the lack of qualified staff.
“It appears from contacts between the Maltese authorities and the European Union institutions that due to the current situation regarding recruitment of Maltese linguists and the resulting lack of qualified translators, it is not possible to guarantee the drafting in Maltese of all acts adopted by the institutions,” the 1 May, 2004 regulation reads.
Due to the lack of preparation by the Maltese government, EU institutions are now not bound by the obligation to draft all acts in Maltese and publish them in that language in the Official Journal of the European Union. In December 2006, the Council of Ministers will review the situation of Malta’s translation effort to determine whether to extend the transitional period for a further period of one year.
Yet again, the endorsement of Maltese as an official EU language has taken severe umbrage with the new three-year derogation, which went unnoticed for the greater part of the celebrations following accession in the past weeks. The Nationalist government only made provision for the training of translators in 2003 when a two-year MA in ‘Translation and Interpretation’ was finally set up at the University of Malta, but which has still not delivered enough candidates for the required staff complement.
Another delay has arisen in the translation field at home, where the 120,000-page acquis communautaire, the European Union’s body of laws, is also behind schedule. The document had to be translated by April 30 but Head of the Translation and Law Drafting Unit Dr Vanni Bruno told MaltaToday the acquis is now planned to be ready by September 2004, not least due to “diverse vicissitudes” such as translators not being paid.
“We are effectively trying to do what other countries have been doing since 1996. In June 2001, my colleague and myself were given the terms of reference to basically ‘run the show,’ and we enrolled translators and other firms on a part-time basis to carry out the translation of the acquis.”
Bruno denied the translated acquis was replete with errors and had to be revised: “There are no mistakes. It is useless generalising over whether certain translations failed to make the grade. Every piece of translation was graded and some warranted revision and others had to be redone. However, one has to keep in mind that other countries had time to have a legal revision, a terminological revision and a grammatical revision, which we could not afford to do with our time constraints.”
Tragic translation
Malta’s translation effort has been laced with problems. Reports in The Malta Independent on Sunday last year had revealed that EU Constitution translators had been instructed to translate the document literal, ‘word by word’, translation by a representative from the Office of the Attorney General. In July 2003, MaltaToday revealed how the Translation and Law Drafting Unit had been bypassed in the translation of the EU Constitution, instead falling in the hands of young lawyer whose howlers included such as expressions as “the inhabitants of Europe arriving in successive waves” translated as “l-habitanti (sic)… waslu f’mewg ta’ success” and the term “advisory bodies” translating as “igsma tal-pariri.”
Following the embarrassing translation, the TLU was asked by the Office of the Prime Minister to translate the draft EU Constitution.
The situation today shows no further improvement since last year when EU Commission general-secretary David O’Sullivan had told MaltaToday in July there was an “objective problem with the quantity and quality of available translators.”
Today, potential lawyer-linguists who study law at the University of Malta no longer require an A-level in the Maltese language, and the results has been a drop in those studying Maltese at advanced level.
Maltese was removed as an entry requirement to the Faculty of Law at the University of Malta in October 2001. That year, students choosing to take their Maltese A-level had already decreased by 33 per cent to 377 from an all-time high of 564 students a year before.
Today entry requirements to law demand English A-level at grade ‘C’ or better, whilst Maltese has been demoted to a languid Intermediate level with grade ‘E’ or better. This year English will also be removed as an A-level requirement.
In comments to MaltaToday in July 2003, Faculty of Law Dean Prof. Ian Refalo said the removal of Maltese does not bear on the translation incident, stressing that legal translators should have both legal qualifications and a special grounding in Maltese. To salvage law students from the ‘menglish’ threat, sixth-year law students take two credits in Maltese for their preparation in the Maltese legal culture and language.
Education Ministry Louis Galea has expressed public disagreement with the changes in the past, but knows he has to bow in front of the law: the matter has to be dealt with by the University Senate, which is an autonomous body.
matthew@newsworksltd.com
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