If you really need good (experienced ?) Perl programmers from the local market and you don't find the perfect match you can either hire less experienced programmers whom already have 1-2 year of Perl behind them and give them more time or you can hire people experienced in some other language (e.g. 7-10 years in Java or C/C++ ?) and teach them Perl.

Depends on the people. There are some people I know with zero Perl experience that I'd hire like a shot. There are people I've interviewed with eight years Perl experience who I wouldn't touch with a barge pole.

Number of years using language X isn't really a good guide on whether somebody is actually any good at their job :-)

Would I hire a good programmer with 7-10 years experience over somebody with less experience, but 1-2 years of Perl. Yup - without a shadow of a doubt.

Unless I need somebody I can throw at a problem immediately general knowledge easily trumps specific in my experience.