Gaelic suffers 'Maltese language syndrome'

The start of the new year has not only seen the addition of two new official EU languages with the accession of Bulgaria and Romania but also the inclusion of Gaelic.

Although Ireland has been a member of the EU since 1973, it only started to lobby for its traditional language to be included following the accession of Malta in 2004, when Maltese became an official EU language.

One of the main Irish lobby groups, Stadas, argued that it was an anomaly for Maltese to be recognised and not Gaelic. Following months of discussion, the EU Council agreed to promote Gaelic from a treaty language to the 23rd official language from the beginning of this year.

Gaelic was Ireland's predominant language until the middle of the 1800s but has since been overwhelmed by English. It is still taught in schools, but regular daily use is confined to small pockets of the Irish population.

Use of Gaelic by the EU institutions is, however, proving problematic, with EU officials unofficially dubbing the issue as "a Maltese syndrome". "We are facing an identical situation we had two and a half years ago with the Maltese language," an EU official from the translation and interpretation services told The Times.

"We are not finding the right people to hire as translators and interpreters. Gaelic was never used in these areas before. This is the same situation we faced when we started using Maltese in Brussels. There were no trained translators and interpreters and so we had to limit our services. In the Maltese case, the situation improved more recently, especially with regard to translation; however, we still face a lot of problems when it comes to Maltese interpretation."

The number of Maltese translators working with the EU institutions is close to 100, about 35 short of the full complement needed to satisfy all the EU institutions' needs. However, there are only a handful of professional Maltese interpreters and the service is still very limited.

The EU official said the situation with Gaelic was much worse. "We have only four freelance Gaelic interpreters and fewer than 20 translators. We need years to overcome this problem."

During the first years of accession, the Maltese government and the EU Council had agreed to limit the translation services to just a few legislative documents.

Now that the situation regarding Maltese staff has improved, the EU has accepted a request by the government for all EU documents to be translated into Maltese.