By Ramona Depares

It is most definitely a positive step for Maltese to become an official language of the European Union, but at the same time this is nothing more than should have been expected, Emmanuel Mifsud, Associate Professor at the University of Malta said yesterday.

Dr Mifsud was reacting to a report which appeared in MaltaToday last week in which it was confirmed that Maltese would become an official language of the EU if the island joins.

"With a couple of understandable exceptions (Luxembourg and Ireland), the official language of every member state is also official in the EU," Dr Briffa said. "Now Maltese is not only (together with English) an official language in the constitution of our islands, it is also the national language - that is the language of identity. This symbolic status is further strengthened by the fact that it is the native language of the absolute majority of the Maltese (98.6 % according to a recent authoritative study, cf. ‘Malta – a linguistic landscape’, Sciriha & Vassallo 2001). All this gives Maltese a very strong position that more than warrants its new status in the EU."

Dr Briffa added that the significance of this new status must be seen against the background of the other languages in the EU, where one usually speaks in terms of two different statuses: official languages and working languages.

"The status of an EU official language is a prestigious one which gives the representatives of a country the right to address general assemblies in their own language," he continued. "Besides, documents of general application such as the Acquis Communautaire, as well as the Official Journal of the European Communities, are translated into all official languages. However, although in theory any official language may be used as a working language in the day-to-day running of EU business, so far only three major languages - English, French and German - have been used as such."

Dr Briffa believes that in order to fulfil its new role as an official EU language, Maltese will have to expand its legal terminology, aligning it with that used in EU legislation.

"Any new function adopted by a language calls for some sort of development in its structure. Due to the bulk of translations which will have to be done, we shall have to develop and refine our translation techniques, possibly also establishing a diploma for translators. The Bord ghall-Ilsien Malti has already suggested a modern framework in the form of a National Council for Maltese, which should also include a technical committee for the development of terminology and translations," the university lecturer said.

As for other positive effects, Dr Briffa is happy that Maltese will be more present in European fora and will feature in multilingual publications, thereby increasing international awareness of our small language and national culture. He believes that the new role should give Maltese a stronger foothold and enable it to share the same status as other European national languages much bigger than itself.