Writer Immanuel Mifsud (May 11) laments the lack of Maltese literary translators. I don’t blame him, he writes in his preferred language, Maltese, and apparently excels in it, having recently carried off the EU prize for literature. But are there that many competent authors to warrant an “army of literary translators”?

I share Mr Mifsud’s sadness at Malta not having a reading culture. The love of reading is something that is instilled from an early age, in the home and/or at school.

Every book published in Icelandic is translated, he points out. That may be the case but Iceland has a long and well-documented literary tradition dating back centuries to shortly after the first settlement there around 900AD. Indeed, there are plenty of bookshops there too, a result, I guess, of the Icelanders’ love of reading.

In Malta, we are fortunate to have English as one of our national languages; English (I gather) is taught widely at all levels in schools, colleges and other institutions of learning. Tens of thousands of foreigners visit Malta annually purposely to study English as a foreign language. Yet, surprisingly, Maltese authors do not seem to favour the English language.

Maybe we ought to be encouraging our youngsters to read more books in English.

Thousands of good books are available in our local libraries. And if they are that way inclined they may even take up writing… in English.