Maltese terminology database being compiled

Two experts are in the process of compiling a Maltese terminology database to assist translators working in translation units in Malta, Brussels and Luxembourg.

The terminology is expected to be completed by next year.

Meanwhile, the Faculty of Arts is 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.

Courses director 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.

Prof. Eynaud was speaking yesterday during the presentation of six interpreting booths for simultaneous interpretation training at the University of Malta unveiled by Education Minister Louis Galea and Carlo Benedetti, the EU Commission's DG for Interpreting Services.

The booths, installed at the Faculty of Arts, can accommodate 12 students at a time. The project was financed under the EU Transition Facility Funds.

The Bureau of the Commission for Conference Interpreting has for the past year sent over to Malta experienced interpreters to help in the running of a course which included the training of trainers, 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 is to have the course registered with the European Masters in Conference Interpreting.