The elusive Maltese spell checker hindered by high costs, technical complexities

A project to create a Maltese electronic spell checker has been hampered by high costs and technical obstacles with government now seeking alternatives to its original plans.

Two companies had shown an interest in a government call for a Maltese spell checker more than two years ago, but the offers surpassed the €7 million mark.

Heritage Minister Owen Bonnici said the lack of alignment between IT and linguistic aspects proved to be a major obstacle, rendering the proposals inconclusive.

“Financial considerations were also taken into account as to the cost-viability aspect of what was being proposed,” Bonnici told this newspaper.

The offers were made during the previous legislature when the same ministry, under the supervision of former minister Jose Herrera, launched a preliminary market consultation to analyse whether the market would be able to provide a solution for a Maltese electronic spellchecker.

The process was finalised in October 2021 with the drawing up of a report by an internal technical committee.

The initial plans were abandoned and during the current legislature the ministry held consultations with experts, including the ministry’s own IT division (IMU) and the Kunsill Nazzjonali tal-Ilsien Malti.

“Work is underway to bolster the Kunsill Nazzjonali tal-Ilsien Malti’s operational arm with the necessary expertise and human resources in order to be able to engage in this very important task, as well as to perform better promotion and safeguard of the Maltese language,” Bonnici said.

In the meantime, Traduzzjoni.mt was launched last June. This website offers a free service translation from English to Maltese and vice-versa and provides access to the European Commission’s e-translation service.

“Traduzzjoni.mt is the result of a collective team effort by MITA, the Office of the State Advocate, the University of Malta, a private company, and our ministry through EU funding,” the minister added.

He explained that Traduzzjoni.mt is constantly being refined and improved with other functionalities.

“The Ministry is fully intent on promoting the Maltese language and offering IT-based solutions to this effect,” Bonnici said.

But despite its utility, Traduzzjoni.mt is not a spell checker and the quest to have the latter tool developed remains elusive for the time being.

Herrera and Bonnici were not the first to work on this long-standing issue.

Around 2016, Microsoft attempted to create a Maltese spell checker, with Evarist Bartolo, the education minister at the time, describing it as “an indispensable tool” for academics, journalists, and the public.

And yet, despite the efforts, nothing came off the initiative.

The subject arose again three years later when a PN billboard in the 2019 European parliament election campaign misspelt the word ‘togħla’ (rising), which was spelt as ‘tgħola’.

The Labour government subsequently pledged a renewed effort to invest in a Maltese spell checker but despite setting aside money during the 2020 budget, three years down the line Maltese remains without an electronic checker.