Legal Blogging
The EU Law Blog is a platform for students, academics and practitioners interested in discussing European Union Law. This entry discusses the Maltese translation of EU legislation:
A while back we posted something about the Irish language. You can see that post here. Now it is the turn of the Maltese language. According to Regulation 1/1958 Maltese is an official language. Then the Council adopted Regulation 930/2004 setting up a transitional period of three years from May 1st 2004 during which the institutions would not be obliged to draft all acts in Maltese. But it was also agreed that the Council would review the operation of that Regulation and decide whether it should be extended for a further year.
The Council has now undertaken that review and adopted Regulation 1738/2006 which decides not to extend the period for a further year. That means all new acts of the institutions must be adopted and published in Maltese from April 30th 2007. As for acts that have not already been translated and published in Maltese, they should be published in that language by December 31st 2008, according to Article 3 of Regulation 1738/2006. Has anyone ever costed all this ? It would come as no surprise that the cost of translating into Maltese - a cost borne by all member States - exceeds the GDP of Malta!
posted by Robert Micallef at 12/14/2006 09:53:00 PM
It takes a couple of seconds and a calculator to realise that this guy must be joking! Ejja, Robert. What's the use of pasting such a silly unprofessional report on your blog? Malta's GDP = 7 billion US dollars. Translation costs p/a = less than a million dollars.
Yes of course he is being silly quoting that figure. not the first time that such exagerated numbers are thrown around to make fun of malta's size. it was obviously a joke. in any case, there is some useful stuff in his blog.
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