Translation firms 'overestimated' EU work

A European Commission official in charge of translation services has played down complaints made recently by Maltese translation firms about the lack of documents being sent to them by the Commission.

Speaking to The Times, Manuel Barata de Oliveira, the acting head of the Translation Directorate General said: "There must have been some overestimation on behalf of the Maltese translation community in Malta about the number of pages the Commission needs to translate into Maltese".

According to Maltese companies, the number of documents being sent to Malta by the Commission has declined considerably since July. They claim this has happened only in the case of the Maltese language.

Mr De Oliveira told The Times the Commission was aware of these complaints. He denied the Commission had stopped giving work to Maltese companies, saying that "we are treating the Maltese language in the same way as other languages from the new member states".

He said that due to better management, the Commission has dramatically reduced the need to outsource translations, in all languages.

"I can tell you that in my language, Portuguese, there has been no outsourcing for a good number of months... so the Maltese can't really complain." He said that in the past few months his directorate had sent work to seven Maltese companies.

However, he admitted that "with the Maltese translators already in place, together with the work already given to freelancers, we are coping with the text that we have accepted to translate".

In total, 16 companies had applied to the Commission to work on translating documents into Maltese.