Finnish - a new challenge for interpreters and teachers
In Finland, the problem of communicating with other nations has almost always been solved by studying their languages. But like many other things, Finland´s membership in the European Union has affected this situation, too.
Since Finland became a member of the EU, Finnish received the status of an official EU language, which is interpreted into the languages of the other members in the meetings of the various EU bodies. This caused a sudden and urgent need for competent interpreters who would be able to understand Finnish and translate it into their own mother tongues. It also soon appeared that such people did not seem to exist at all.
Now the problem is being solved by an intensive training program initiated by the EU Commission. The Finnish Ministry of Education will finance the training costs, and the EU is responsible for other expenses. New interpreters are trained at the Vantaa Institute for Continuing Education of the University of Helsinki. The project will take two years and will be finished by July 1, 1999, when Finland becomes Chairman of the EU.
Needles in a haystack
"Looking for existing interpreters with fluent Finnish as a foreign language could well be compared with the proverbial needle in a haystack", says Project Manager Marjut Vehkanen, who, together with Director Pertti Vuorela, has been responsible for organizing the training of the EU interpreters at the Vantaa Institute.Actually, the EU has kept Vehkanen busy since 1994, when she first started to study the position of the Finnish language and the problems of translating from Finnish into other languages. A successful conference held in 1996 with the same theme was a turning-point that gave rise to new projects both in the EU and in Finland. And in 1996 the planning of the present training was started.
The first training period for the future Finnish interpreters at the University of Helsinki began in May 1997. Now 10 people have moved to Finland with the purpose of studying the language. "At the moment we have 22 trainees, the final need being 25 new interpreters in addition to the five existing ones", says Vehkanen, who also combed half of Finland looking for suitable foreigners staying permanently in the country. The purpose was to find people with a working knowledge of Finnish who could be trained as interpreters.
A passive language
Like most interpreters who are trained to interpret Finnish, Leopoldo Costa has a very international background. He learned Spanish, Italian, and French at home from his partly Spanish, partly Italian family, with English and German being added later to his capabilities. He then studied for four years at the University of Geneva, where he acquired the competence of a conference interpreter and has since worked for 27 years in Brussels."Finnish was a new challenge for me when Finland became a member of the EU", says Costa, who studied it first for a year in Brussels at an intensive course organized by the Commission and now in Finland. His studies bring him to Helsinki about four or five times a year. According to Costa, it is easier to make progress in Finland than in Brussels. "But our target is not to speak Finnish fluently", Costa points out. "Above all, an interpreter must understand the language in question and translate it correctly. For us, Finnish is a passive language." When the training is finished, he will interpret from Finnish into Italian and Spanish.
Growing needs for Finnish in Russia
The European Union is not the only place where there is a growing need for Finnish-speaking people. The political and economic changes in Russia have greatly improved the status of the Finnish language in the country, where there has been a Finnish-speaking minority for centuries. Now that more and more people of Finnish origin are willing and allowed to immigrate to Finland, good knowledge of the language is a must. Also, the growing needs of tourism and economic cooperation between the two countries will require more people who speak Finnish.Last year, the Vantaa Institute started a complementary training course for Finnish teachers in St Petersburg. The training is given at Herzen University and will go on until the end of this century.
Aili Myller comes from a Finnish family that moved to Inkeri in the neighbourhood of present St Petersburg as early as the 17th century. The family has kept its Finnish traditions, among them the language and Finnish Christian names. Her husband also comes from a Finnish family from the same region.
After a career as an interpreter and a secretary at Finnish firms in St Petersburg, Myller is now teaching immigrants who plan to move to Finland. Despite their Finnish origins, many of them don´t speak Finnish any more. "A Finnish course of three months has been compulsory since last spring for those who want to immigrate, before permission is given", she says. People now have to queue in order to get into the course, although as many as nine simultaneous courses are being held this autumn. The Finnish teacher course at the University has 15 students who are being trained as teachers; most of them are qualified teachers already who have worked in the profession even before this complementary training.
Interest in the Finnish language is rising in Russia. At present there are four elementary schools at St Petersburg where Finnish is taught. Aili Myller´s own family continues with their long Finnish traditions, and her daughter attends a Finnish high school in St Petersburg.
Anna-Maija Gruber
