Languages Commission lauds President

COLOMBO: Official Languages Commission Chairman Raja Collure commended the steps by President Mahinda Rajapaksa to enforce the provisions of 13th Amendment to the Constitution to accommodate the commission’s recommendations in respect of the New recruits to the public service.

Collure in a letter to the President has underlined the validety of requiring competence in the second official language and the provision of some attractive incentives for persons already in public service to induce them to acquire proficiency in the Second official language either Sinhala or Tamil.

The letter: “Let me at the outset convey to you the gratitude of the chairman and members of the Official Languages Commission for having afforded us this opportunity of presenting its Memorandum of Recommendations - 2006.

Among the functions of the Official Languages Commission are that of making recommendations in respect of the implementation of the Official Languages Policy as well as monitoring implementation, awareness, creation and action on complaints against violations of Language Rights. “We are pleased to state that during last year the Commission’s activities reached the peak in its entire history.

In your Thaipongal message of January 14th, 2006 among other things you stated that the recommendations of the Commission will be implemented.

We are extremely pleased that the Government has begun the implementation of those recommendations. We are also grateful to Minister D. E. W. Gunasekara for his commitment in taking necessary steps to give effect to your statement.

During the year 2006, the Government took certain steps to enforce the provisions of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution exceeding any previous Government.

Firstly in accordance with our recommendations, new recruits to the public service are now required to have competence in the second official language. (Second Official Languages means Tamil Language for those competent in Sinhala Language and Sinhala Language for those competent in the Tamil Language).

The other is provision of some attractive incentives for persons already in public service to induce them to acquire proficiency in the second official language.

We submit that these two steps taken by your Government are of a decisive nature. In fact those steps should have been taken soon after the adoption of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. Had it been done at that time there would not have remained a language problem at present.

The recommendations of 2006 in our belief will help solve certain problems relating to language which will subsist until the present steps taken by your Government achieves the end results.

The present recommendations envisage the creation of an institution for providing translations and interpretation on self-employment basis between Sinhala-Tamil. Tamil-Sinhala, Sinhala-English, English-Sinhala, Tamil-English and English-Tamil.

As you may be aware, there is a dire shortage of competent translators and interpreters in these languages.

As such there is need to obtain the maximum service of competent translators and interpreters serving in different institutions and elsewhere.

The services of those translators and interpreters who are registered with the proposed institution could be obtained by way of assignments made on the basis of certain rates of payment.

While Government institutions could obtain the services for translations through electronic means, the assignments to those registered with the institution could also be made in a similar manner.

The supervision of translations will be the responsibility of the few persons permanently employed. Upon the establishment of this institution, it will not be necessary for each and every Government institution to have its own translators and interpreters. Those who are presently in the Translators Service could also be absorbed into this institution.

These recommendations are based on the model of the Translations Bureau which functions in Canada where the federal administration is bi-lingual.

A delegation of the Official Languages Commission which visited Canada on a study tour in 2005 studied how that institution functions.

The proposed institution could, in addition, undertake the compilation of glossaries and updating them as does the Translations Bureau in Canada.

It is recommended that until such time that the proposed institution is to set up its work cold be commenced as a Unit of the Department of Official Languages which is already engaged in translation work and has some resources for such work.

It would take some time for the fruition of the results of the two steps taken by your government mentioned earlier.

To meet the language problems that would subsist in the interim period and to expedite the use of both Sinhala and Tamil Languages in the administration, we believe that our recommendations of 2005 need be implemented.

Among them the following should obtain priority to recruit to the public service a sufficient number of persons competent in the Tamil Language, to take expeditious measures to train translators and interpreters through the University system which has the necessary human resources and infrastructural facilities for such training, to convert Official Languages Department which has already developed into an institution to train public servants in the two Official Languages and the Link Language to an independent institute capable of carrying out its functions more efficiently, to make Sinhala and Tamil Languages compulsory subjects in the Secondary Schools upto the General Certificate of Education (Ordinary Level).

We highly appreciate the steps taken by the Government to implement the Official Languages Policy.