Translation in Basque institutions: the Basque Parliament
Abstract
The Basque Parliament, since its constitution ten years ago, has adopted the Statutes of Gernika, in which the official nature of Basque and Spanish is highlighted. In this sense, the first ruling of the Basque Parliament declared that publications made by that institution were to be bilingual.
The lack of initial resources had a clear effect on the work of translators. The translation department was formed, initially, by three translators, one secretary and the Head of the Service, and at that time had to face the problem of a lack of consolidation in the use of Basque in government language.
During the last legislature, the translation department has received a great deal of backing, both in terms of resources and materials. On the one hand, four new translators have joined the staff, while another four persons have been given temporary contracts for the translation of the existing backlog of Reports of Proceedings. Likewise, all the translators have been provided with a word processor. Finally, by public tender, the translation of the Reports of Proceedings corresponding to the second legislature, which had not been translated, were awarded to an outside group of translators.
It is clear that the situation has improved substantially, although the Basque parliament is not free of the problems which even today affect the translation of government texts into Basque: a lack of a standardization of terminology, syntactic problems, etc.
Lastly, there is a clear need to give interpreting the same stimulus that has been given to translation, as until now this work has been carried out without any kind of previous training, with the risks that this involves. They are, without doubt, different types of work, which require different training.
