Irish Grammar Must Improve Say EUrocrats
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. The European Commission has told the Irish to brush up on the Irish language (Gaeilge) grammar rules or else the language risks losing its newly acquired official EU language status. Plus, there are problems in hiring qualified translators.
The Irish Times of 12-October-2007 tells us that that the EU Commissioner for Multilingualism, Leonard Orban, says a “new edition of the (Irish Language) official grammar has not been published for years and the current edition is out of print” and that this “ is causing some confusion among translators, in-house and freelance alike, and adding to the institutions’ workload.”
Meanwhile, the Irish say “we are determined to defend the right of languages at community level,” (Ultan translates: “Er, we’re making kids learn it in school - even if they don’t want to - and arguing over the translation of place names).
Seems like there aren’t enough properly qualified Gaeilge translators to meet demand and no official training course for Gaeilge interpreters either. Gaeilge EU translation volumes are high (EU law is about 100,000 pages) and project management has failed; annual Gaeilge translation requirements were underestimated by 100%.
Incidentally, back in the real world, there is a great article on Localization in Irish by Michal Boleslav Měchura in the current (#91 Volume 18 Issue 7 ) issue of Multilingual magazine. Check it out!
This is a well-known problem in the Irish-language community. The Irish language is, in many ways, quite disoriented at the moment. All the major reference works are out of date and out of print. There is widespsread unclarity as to what the correct standard form of the language should be, even among translators, editors and teachers. There is a shortage of language professionals and training opportunities for them.
Nobody cared about any of this until a few years ago when Irish acquired its new status, both in the EU and in Ireland itself (the Official Languages Act 2003), and the demand for language services suddenly exploded.
The infrastructure hasn’t caught up yet. We’re working on it, though!
Posted by Michal Boleslav Měchura on 10/15 at 04:26 AMOverall policy seems very messy in this regard. I see that the Minister for Education, Mary Hanafin, has also directed that Gaelscoileanna (Irish language schools) will be obliged to teach English to pupils for 30 minutes daily!
http://www.rte.ie/news/2007/0726/education.html
This proposal resulted in some colorful comment, not least from Micheal O Nuallain, brother of famed Irish novelist, poet, linguist, and wit Flann O’Brien (and retired employee of An Roinn Oideachais):
http://www.tribune.ie/article.tvt?_scope=TribuneFTF&id=103959&SUBCAT=&SUBCATNAME=&DT=02/09/2007 00:00:00&keywords=Mary Hanafin&FC=
Posted by Ultan on 10/15 at 01:33 PM
Next entry: Tu Nombre en Japones
Previous entry: Learning and growing local languages