Translators and Interpreters in the Public Sector
In October 2017, the Panhellenic Association of Translators (PEM) issued a Press Release outlining its main views and demands relating to changes in the public sector (registry for the central government bodies, national registry for executive officers, mobility).
Our main demands
We ask the government and all public entities with a translation department to assume their responsibilities towards the citizens by supporting translators working as civil servants.
We namely ask for the following:
- Recognise the legal equivalency of the seal for those who meet the criteria to join PEM. This way, any civil servant with university-level translation education meeting the criteria to join PEM will be able to certify their translation by signing it and using their seal.
- Staff fully all translation departments in all public sector divisions.
- Make it mandatory for people who have graduated from philology/literature or other non-related schools and work in translation divisions to undergo training in translation. To put it simply: speaking a language is not the same as translating from said language.
- Facilitate university-educated translators to complete relevant postgraduate programmes.
- Allow university-educated translators to develop professionally in existing or new translation divisions, through engaging solely in translation duties.
- University-educated translators should be the only ones allowed to supervise secondary-education translators.
Download and read PEM’s Press Release on Translators and Interpreters in the Public Sector (only available in Greek).
