Editorial

This country rightly wants the Maltese language to be one of the EU's official languages. Our language is an integral element of our identity and its combination of a Semitic bedrock with a great amount of Romance and English vocabulary symbolises our desire to act as the EU's bridge with the countries of North Africa.

Though most of us know that the English language, our second language, needs to be cultivated and its correct use strengthened, we are proud of Maltese and would feel crippled if we were to be deprived of it.

It is this pride that suffered a diminution last Thursday when the official Maltese version of the draft constitution for Europe presented at Thessaloniki appeared in a text fraught with mis-spelling, grammatical errors and unidiomatic usages.

An important text such as this should have been free from even the occasional error, but to present it with such a farrago of mistakes is unpardonable. Some of the mistakes are on the level of schoolkids' howlers. Had we been living in the paranoid atmosphere we have experienced in the past, we would already have been muttering words like "sabotage"!

It is not as if this country lacked experienced translators with an excellent knowledge of written Maltese as well as of many European languages. In this case it appears that the translators had no connection with Malta's Translation and Law Drafting Unit, but were commissioned directly by EU officials.

The trouble is that those selected for the job were much less than competent and, worse still, their supervisor or reviser was either just as incompetent or else did not even bother to do his or her job at all.

Now of course the shocking version circulated at Thessaloniki has been withdrawn, and the Translation and Law Drafting Unit has been asked to produce another and much more acceptable version by tomorrow.

Unfortunately the damage to Malta's image has been done, even if the Prime Minister exclaims it was not the end of the world, and it might take some time to make our EU partners forget it.

The pity is that the Translation and Law Drafting Unit has been doing a good job. A team of part-timers has been busy for the last few years translating EU documents into Maltese. Though matters have not always been rosy in the unit, with translators getting little feedback from their revisers, and lately, as the head of the unit has publicly complained, the unit's team of translators has not been paid since January, they have done a good job.

Could it be that it was lack of local funds that led to the EU's directly commissioning its own translators for the Maltese version of the draft constitution?

Tenders have already been issued for translators to work for the EU after Malta's accession in May 2004. Presumably, the selection will be in the hands of EU officials. One trusts, however, that the selection board will have the full advice of fully competent Maltese experts to ensure that no errors will be made.

Malta and her partners have met at Thessaloniki. Next time something of this sort is allowed to occur, it might be at Philippi.