European Commission representation marks European Day of Languages in Malta
This year happens to mark the 10th anniversary of the European Day of Languages, with the European Commission’s representation in Malta having organised two activities to celebrate.
On Monday 23 September, at the Sagristija Chapel at the Valletta Waterfront there was a musical recital by Laura Cioffi. Cioffi is a gifted flutist and happens to be last year's winner of the translation contest Juvenes Translatores. This is an annual competition to reward the best young translators in the European Union with the aim to promote multilingalism and provide an introduction to translation.
Later on Dr Marco Galea gave a presentation of Transcript – a bi-monthly review of books and writing from around Europe. Its aim is to promote quality literature written in the ‘smaller’ languages and to give wider circulation to material from small-language literary publications through the medium of English, French and German. The focus of the latest issue of Transcript is Malta
On Friday, 30 September the European Commissioner for Health and Consumer Policy John Dalli inaugurated the second and last part of the celebrations at the Valletta Waterfront. The evening consisted of a free open air concert by two local bands - Nafra and Kultural.
Nafra plays innovative compositions promoting folk music to a contemporary platform featuring the authentic sounds of Maltese traditional instruments whilst KulTural produce an eclectic mixture of rhythmic percussion, didgeridoo, classical guitar, street style rapping, beat box, Maltese għana and violin.