Three years after Malta acceded to the European Union, and after the pro-membership camp had made political mileage from the fact that Maltese was to become one of the EU’s official languages, the translation and interpretation of Maltese is posing an increasingly specific problem to EU institutions.

The problem is expected to be compounded in May, when a derogation granted at the request of the Maltese authorities expires. The derogation gave a three-year grace period in which the EU would not have to publish all legislative acts in Maltese in the EU Official Journal. Since membership, translations have been limited to Acts jointly adopted by the European Parliament and the Council.

The European Commission bemoaned the fact this week that although it had held competitions for Maltese translators in both 2003 and 2006, neither exercise had yielded successful candidates, while the availability of freelance interpreters remains “limited”.

“Apart from Maltese,” the EC said on Friday, “all other new languages rapidly fell into step with their older counterparts in the Directorate General for Translation.”

Bulgaria and Romania, which joined the EU last January, almost three years after Malta, have already made significant headway in meeting the linguistic challenge – and each now have 30 translators and another 150 successful candidates for each language, meaning both countries are well on track to meeting their targets. German Christian Democrat Union European parliamentarian Ingeborg Grassle called on the EU’s new multilingualism commission this week to encourage Malta to do away with the need for Maltese to be classified as an official EU language, since English is the country’s second official language. She also derided as “exaggerated” the fact that, very shortly, all EU legislation will have to also be published in Maltese “for just 400,000 people”.

The state of affairs is even worse as regards staff for the Directorate General for Interpretation (DGI). As matters currently stand, the DGI reports it has managed to recruit just one staff member for Maltese interpretations, while it also has at its disposal the services of 14 freelancers. This falls well short of the directorate’s pre-2004 projections of needing the services of 80 interpreters per day for each “new” EU language.

“Maltese,” the Commission found, “poses a particular challenge.”

Since 2004, only nine new Maltese interpreters have passed EU accreditation tests, despite the DGI’s close work with the Maltese authorities to improve the situation. Conference interpreter training courses were organised at the University of Westminster in 2004–2005 and at the University of Malta in 2005–2006 and 2006-07 but with poor end results, according to the Commission.

Only 27 per cent of the demand for Maltese language translations is being met, as against 90 to 100 per cent of the most widely used EU15 languages, according to Commission figures.

With the exception of Maltese, all other “new” EU languages “rapidly fell into step with their older counterparts”.