One would think that the enormous amount of taxpayers’ money being spent to ensure that all EU documents are equally available to all in equal quality in each language was money well spent.

However, when one starts to read the documents themselves, one seriously begins to doubt it.

Take as example this European Parliament document: Opinjoni tal-Kumitat ghall-impjiegi u l-Affarijiet Socjali (10 October 2013) ghall-kumitat ghall-Affarijiet Kostituzzjonali ta’ governanza b’diversi livelli fl-Unjoni Ewropea (A7-0372/2013- if you google search this number you will find the document in its entirety).

Among the more serious mistakes, here are a couple betraying those typical Maltese qualities: shoddiness and flippancy.

1.     “Il- Kumitat ghall-impjiegi u l-Affarijiet Socjali jistieden lill Committee on Constitutional Affairs, bhala l-kumitat responsabbli”. The name of the committee was left in English and there are two commas after the word ‘affairs’. Is this how a high quality translations should be?

2.     In this document, euro is ewro here and euro there! It is referred to as il-euro and l-ewro! Why is there no consistency?

3.     And then, why is the verb iddikjara written iddikkjara?

4.     Why did they get something as basic as the accent wrong? They wrote legittimita instead of legittimita? Where is Kunsill tal-Malti?

In another European Parliament document, called Rizoluzzjoni tal-Parlament Ewropew dwar il-komunikazzjoni tal-Kummissjoni dwar id-dimensjoni socjali tal-Unjoni Ekonomika u Monetarja (B-7-0496/2013), one finds the Italian and French use of the comma instead of the decimal point! Since when does Malta use the Italian and French system? Why are there “24.2 per cent” and “17.3 percent”) for example, instead of “24.2 per cent” and “17.3 per cent”?

Are these the best people Malta can produce?

Rose Grech

Qormi