EC denies issues raised by Maltese translation companies

The European Commission has reacted officially to issues raised by the government last month on behalf of private Maltese translation companies over a claimed lack of work forwarded to them by the Commission.

In an official letter sent to the government and seen by The Times, the director general of the translation department at the Commission, Klaus Lonnroth, denied that the level of demand for external translation into the Maltese language was less than in the other new languages.

Mr Lonnroth said that "with the exception of the months of July, August and September, where demand was slightly lower for Maltese, for October, demand for translation into Maltese has been the same as for translation in the other EU-10 languages."

Mr Lonnroth also confirmed that the claimed lack of translation work was not connected in any way to the derogation for Maltese. He said that since the accession of 10 new member states, the Directorate General for Translation had had to cope with a very high demand for translation into the new languages without having the internal or external resources necessary to meet this demand completely.

"For this reason the Commission adopted temporary measures whereby a full translation in all official languages is strictly limited to documents for which publication is legally compulsory or which are of important political significance."

The issue concerns Maltese private companies tendering for jobs offered by the Commission for translation of EU documents into the Maltese language.

According to these companies the amount of documents sent to Malta by the Commission was reduced considerably since last July. The companies implied that the reduction of work could very possibly be attributed to a derogation agreed to between the EU Council and the Maltese government last March.

The government had also raised the issue with the Commission on the publication of a list of companies awarded tenders for Maltese language translations. Maltese companies complained that they were being kept in the dark by the Commission over who was being awarded tenders. The Commission also denied this.

The Commission said this list was not confidential and was published in the official EU journal at the end of October.

However, the Commission added that "all contractors of all official languages have been able to check their individual position on these lists since the beginning of June." The position of the contractors was governed by their quality-price ratio according to applicable regulations on public procurement.

Since April 1, the Commission has given work to seven contractors for the Maltese language.