A chara, - I see that Senator Maurice Hayes has described the Irish version of European Law terms as "barbaric" (The Irish Times, November 12th). Is the "barbarity" of our language the reason that Irish is not an official EU language? Following the accession in May, the EU shall have 20 official languages. Irish will not be included.
EU law (Council Regulation 1/1958) shall be amended to insert Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Slovene and Maltese (which, like Irish, has about 380,000 speakers) as official EU languages.
EU laws and official documents shall be translated into the new official EU languages. Laws enacted by the Oireachtas must be issued in Irish and English. Although EU law is directly enforceable in Ireland, the EU is not obliged to issue European laws (except treaties) in Irish.
Whenever job opportunities with EU institutions arise, these are open to EU citizens who can speak two (or more) official EU languages. Irish citizens applying for such jobs are disadvantaged as Irish is disregarded.
For each new official language, the EU shall engage 110 new translators and 40 new interpreters. Were Irish also included, such employment opportunities would present for Irish people. Arrears of current applicable European law would also need to be translated into Irish in the interim. The funding for all this would come from the EU translation budget to which Ireland shall contribute in any event.
The EU is based on a diversity of different cultures, which makes multilingualism essential to the European project. As the influence of the EU in our everyday lives grows, any language which is excluded from EU business will come under great pressure and its future will be in doubt.
Not every single document would need to be translated into Irish: EU institutions may stipulate in their rules of procedure which official languages are to be used in specific cases (Council Regulation 1/1958, Article 6). In practice, the normal day-to-day working languages used, for example, in the European Commission, are English, French and, increasingly, German.
Also, relay languages are used in the translation of languages of small nations - for example, Maltese is translated into English and then to Slovene and vice versa. Such an arrangement would address the practical modalities of translation for Irish.
The Irish Government has but to ask that Irish be included as an official EU language, our "barbarity" notwithstanding. - Yours, etc.,
DÁITHÍ MAC CÁRTHAIGH, BL, Ráth Cairn, Áth Buí, Co na Mí.