Lack of booths may stall interpreters' course

The interpreters' post-graduate diploma course at the University of Malta may not open this year because a tender for the supply of equipment has not been awarded yet.

The European Union had approved €150,000 for the interpreting course to be set up in Malta in June last year. A year later, however, the project was still "stuck in the local bureaucratic machine", Joseph Eynaud, course director of post-graduate diploma courses in translation and interpreting, told The Times yesterday.

"Unless the equipment (for an interpreter's lab) is in place by July, there will be no interpreting course in the next academic year," Prof. Eynaud said.

He blamed Malta's inability to provide enough interpreters to European institutions on the "sluggish pace" at which the tender was being processed.

Prof. Eynaud said it would take about two weeks to install the equipment which consisted of booths where students would practise during the course.

He explained that the consequences of not issuing the tender would not just be another year facing interpreters' shortages. "We also risk losing the funds allocated by the EU for the project a two-year course if time frames are not met," Prof. Eynaud said.

The translation and interpreting diploma, a two-year course, started in October 2003 at the University to cater for the unprecedented need for translators and interpreters after the Maltese government successfully lobbied for Maltese to be recognised as an official EU language.

About 45 students completed the translators' course this year and 36 are reading for their diploma. The EU had allocated €215,000 for the setting up of this course.

In the case of interpreting, only four out of the seven who attended the course at Westminster University qualified as conference interpreters. The course was sponsored by the EU.

Prof. Eynaud said the service of a couple of IT experts was also needed to set up a terminology base for the translators' course. The experts have not been chosen yet because, even in this case, a tender had not been awarded.

Last week, Labour MEP Joseph Muscat refused to continue addressing the European Parliament after he was informed no interpreters were present to translate his speech from the Maltese language.

Prof. Eynaud said Maltese MEPs should decide "once and for all" which language they wanted to speak in and adopt that language throughout.

Prof. Eynaud recalled that Mr Muscat had addressed European Justice, Freedom and Security Commissioner Franco Frattini in Italian at a recent plenary in Strasbourg when interpreters had been available.

"Consistency would make us more credible with the EU institutions," he said.