'Bad Maltese' in EU website

The new Maltese translation of the EU website is riddled with mistakes, lexicographer Joe Felice Pace has charged.

The lexicographer, who apart from working for 18 years with renowned Maltese expert Guze Aquilina spent the last seven years translating technical documents into Maltese, said the site was definitely "not up to standard", but full of orthographic and idiomatic mistakes and inconsistencies.

"This cannot be accepted," he said.

Speaking to The Times, Mr Felice Pace said the mistakes in the Maltese version of the EU website are similar to the mistakes found in the official Maltese translation of the draft constitution for Europe submitted to the European summit in Greece last year.

Mistakes include the word diversità (diversity) written as diveristà and zghazagh (young people) written as zaghzagh. Another mistake is sir af aktar (get to know more) written as sir taf aktar.

Mr Felice Pace said the website includes bad translations of idioms. He criticised the fact that it has a number of inconsistencies, with certain words, or phrases, written in different ways. He said it was obvious that the website was not proofread.

This was reiterated by Patrick Beacom, director of Lexicom Translation Services, who said there are many mistakes in the website and it had "obviously" not been proofread. He said the site was full of "silly mistakes".

Mr Beacom said he has written to the webmaster to point out the mistakes.

"It is very disappointing. We know that there were problems to find translators but, at least, the website should have been seen by the right people," he said.

Mr Beacom said it was also embarrassing for the Maltese people that the link to the Maltese version from the EU website included a word in English (Il-homepage ta' l-Unjoni Ewropea). Mr Beacom said the word portal could have been used instead of homepage.

Mr Felice Pace blamed both the government and the EU for the language "disaster". He said the government was aware of the problem, which he himself had brought up during a meeting in January 2000 in the presence of Education Minister Louis Galea.

He said the government had not striven to train translators so they could do the work while the EU had not employed the right people for the job.

"Between Brussels, Luxembourg, Strasbourg and Malta there are jobs for 200 translators, some of which full time, who earn around †5,000 a month," he said.

Asked whether Maltese was a difficult language to translate in, Mr Felice Pace said "not at all". However, he said there are many University students, even those majoring in Maltese, who do not know the language well.

The site can be accessed on http://www.europa.eu.int/index_mt.htm.

The Società Dante Alighieri is launching an introductory course covering technical and methodological approaches to translation work, aimed at those who wish to take up this activity professionally and are fluent in English and Italian, the languages used for the course.

Major issues and difficulties encountered in translation work will be discussed during the course by Alessandra Sciarra and solutions offered. Fundamental translation methodologies and the criteria to distinguish a good translation from a bad one will also be tackled together with specialised translations.

The 10-hour course will be held between May 3 and 7 between 6 and 8 p.m. at the SDA Learning Centre, Valletta. Details may be obtained by sending an e-mail to dante_malta@hotmail.com or by phoning on 2123-8408 after 5.30 p.m. from Monday to Friday.