The Language Commissioner in the office of Kosovo’s Prime Minister, Slavisa Mladenovic warns that the law on the Use of Languages and services in Kosovo is not being fully implemented and that there is only one Serbian translator in the Kosovo institutions.
Mladenovic’s main job is to oversee the implementation of the Law on the Use of Languages in Kosovo. He says that most of the institutions in Kosovo do not have enough staff or educated people and that there aren’t sufficient resources for the full implementation of the Law on Use of Languages.
“The people who work in institutions are faced with a large volume of work and usually their profiles are not satisfactory,” said Mladenovic and emphasized “that there is only one translator a Serb, for all state services in Kosovo”. Mainly Albanians deal with translation, they translate into their non-mother tongue which is a serious problem, said Mladenovic and added that this also leads to comic situations – technically, the law is being respected, because translation is done, but the quality is not satisfactory.
In Kosovo, Albanian and Serbian are the official languages, according to the Kosovo Constitution and the definitions of the law. The Constitution was printed in 60 pages, and its Serbian version has 930 mistakes. Many of them are ridiculous, and can also be found in laws and other legal acts, parliamentary translations and ads.
The implementation of Kosovo’s laws on language is a problem, agrees and the Community adviser in the government of Kosovo, Blerim Gashi. Gashi said on the Dogovor show (the Agreement) that the Kosovo government would solve this problem “slowly and nicely,” by inclusion of Serbs, professionals who know the language and who have completed appropriate education for this.
Gashi added that the translation problem in Kosovo is not only a problem for Serbs but also for Albanians, which dates back to 1999, including cases of bad translations in Albanian and in English.
The Law on Use of Languages obliges all public institutions and providers of services in Kosovo to ensure the equal use of both official languages, Albanian and Serbian, and languages in official use in municipalities.
