Bilingual skills needed, says Commission

By Chandani Kirinde

The Official Languages Commission has recommended the recruitment to the public service of a sufficient number of persons competent in Tamil and make Sinhala and Tamil compulsory subjects in schools up to the O/L stage as priority measures to be taken to meet the language problem of the country.

These recommendations are contained in the memorandum the chairman and members of the Commission presented to President Mahinda Rajapaksa last week.

Other recommendations include the training of translators and interpreters through the university system which has the necessary human resources and infrastructural facilities for such training and to convert the Official Languages Department, which already trains public servants in languages, to an independent institute capable of carrying out its functions more efficiently.

The Government has already taken two major policy decisions this year to expedite implementation of the language policy adopted nearly 20 years ago but not properly implemented till date. In February, a public administration circular was issued offering attractive incentives to public servants to induce them to acquire proficiency in the second official language - Sinhala language for those competent in Tamil and Tamil language for those competent in Sinhala.

Another circular is to be issued shortly under which new recruits to the public service will need to acquire proficiency in their second language within five years of entering the service.

According to available statistics, of the nearly 900,000 strong public service, only around 9 per cent are proficient in Tamil. The Commission said that if around 38 per cent of the public servants obtain some level of proficiency in the second official language, it would go a long way to make the public administration bi-lingual.

There is also a dire need for translators with only about 166 in the Translators Service according to available statistics. Of these only 44 are qualified in Sinhala/Tamil translation, 108 in Sinhala /English translation and only 14 in Tamil/English translation.

There is an equally bad situation with regards to interpreters despite their requirement to serve in multi-lingual elected bodies such as Parliament, Provincial Councils and local bodies.

The Commission has recommended the establishment of two separate professional services for them and that trainees should be drawn into the service from graduates who are qualified in at least one of the official languages. They should be taught the other official language for a duration of at least two years.

The Commission had arrived at this conclusion taking into consideration the failed attempt to train those with only a secondary education background as translators.