Six interpreting booths for simultaneous interpretation training were unveiled yesterday at the University of Malta by Education Minister Louis Galea and Marco Benedetti, the EU Commission’s DG for Interpreting Services.
Prof. Roger Ellul Micallef, rector of the University, presided over the ceremony.
The laboratory interpreting booths can accommodate 12 students at a time and they have been installed at the Faculty of Arts.
The project was financed under the EU Transition Facility Funds.
The EU delegation included Olga Cosmidou, from the DG Interpreting Service at the European Parliament and other officials. Mr Benedetti and Ms Cosmidou both expressed their satisfaction at the effective way in which
the project was being
implemented.
Minister Louis Galea spoke in Maltese and simultaneous interpretation from the new booths was provided by four of the students.
He thanked the EU Commission and the European Parliament for the advice, support and financial assistance to build Malta’s capacity in the field of simultaneous interpretation.
The minister assured the EU delegation that the government and the university will continue to work together to train the necessary number of professional
interpreters.
The Bureau of the Commission on Conference Interpreting, Service Commun Interprétation-Conférences (SCIC) has for the past year sent over to Malta experienced interpreters to help in the running of the course, which included the training seminar held in September, the organisation of consecutive and simultaneous interpretation sessions for the nine registered students, and the conducting of tests to
monitor students’ progress during the one year post-graduate programme leading to a Masters Degree in Conference Interpreting.
The aim of the Faculty of Arts is to have the course registered with the European Masters in Conference Interpreting.
The course director, Prof. Joseph Eynaud, said the Maltese booth in Brussels and Strasbourg now has four new Maltese interpreters who graduated at the University of Westminster and who have passed recruitment tests in Brussels.
Other graduates in conference interpreting being trained at the Faculty of Arts next year are expected to join the present interpreters working for the Commission and for the European Parliament. Plenary sessions in Strasbourg, council meetings and summits are now being covered in Maltese.
In the meantime two local experts will, by next year, compile a Maltese terminology database to assist translators working in translation units in Malta, Brussels and Luxembourg. The Faculty of Arts is also offering post-graduate courses in Translation Studies.
Forty-five students have just graduated in the post-
graduate diploma for translators and a good number have already been employed in Brussels or Luxembourg.