Peter Agius Announces €40,000 European Parliament Grant For Maltese Interpreters
The European Parliament has approved a €40,000 grant for the University of Malta to help with the training of new Maltese interpreters, the Director General for Interpretation in the European Parliament, Agnieszka Walter-Drop, confirmed to PN MEP Peter Agius.
This was independently confirmed by Lovin Malta.
“Maltese is our country’s language and we want to defend it in Europe and I will do everything for this,” Agius said when commenting on the news.
Agius went on to say that one of the first initiatives he took as an MEP was to hold a meeting with Walter-Drop where he explained “clearly that the parliament must speak Maltese”.
“Walter-Drop explained to me that after the incidents earlier this year with a lack of interpreters, now much more effort is being made, so much so that the European Parliament has just approved a special grant of €40,000 to the University of Malta to help with the training for new Maltese interpreters. Specialised training was also opened for the Maltese to train in the profession of Interpretation directly in Brussels. All this is being done thanks to the pressure we put in favor of the Maltese,” declared Agius.
However, Agius said that he is now also waiting for the Maltese government to do its part, both by fully supporting these efforts and by seeing that it uses Maltese, both internally and in communication with the European institutions.
“Today is the European Day of Languages where Europe must recognise that if people’s languages are not spoken they will be voiceless.”
The EP’s interpreting service can provide financial assistance in the form of grants for actions related to conference interpreter training. The programme’s aim is to help educate new generations of qualified conference interpreters to address existing shortages for some languages, to prepare for the future accession of candidate countries, and to maintain a high standard of interpreting in the European Union’s official languages and the languages of its main political partners.
According to Agius, the UoM applied for this grant and this was approved by the EP.
This action was co-financed by the European Union in the frame of the European Parliament’s grant programme in the field of communication. The European Parliament was not involved in its preparation and is, in no case, responsible for or bound by the information or opinions expressed in the context of this action. In accordance with applicable law, the authors, interviewed people, publishers or programme broadcasters are solely responsible. The European Parliament can also not be held liable for direct or indirect damage that may result from the implementation of the action.
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