Sunday, October 14, 2007

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!

Posted by Ultan on 10/14 at 01:29 AM

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