Adapt provides curated primary legislation data to support Irish language technology

Lack of sufficient language tech a threat to many EU languages, says researcher

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The Irish Language Technology (ILT) research team at the Adapt digital content research centre in DCU has provided Rannóg an Aistriúcháin with Translation Memory (TMX) files of primary legislation (Acts) legacy data spanning the period from 1960-2018.

Rannóg an Aistriúcháin is the Translation Section for the Houses of the Oireachtas. These resources will allow Irish translators to reuse previously translated material using state-of-the-art translation software.

The recently published European Language Equality (ELE) project’s report on the Irish language outlined the necessary steps to securing more technological support for the Irish language to address the risk of digital extinction. 

“The lack of sufficient language technologies is one of the greatest risks threatening sustained use of many EU languages right now, not only Irish,” said Adapt researcher and ILT lead at DCU, Dr Teresa Lynn. “For these languages to continue to play a role at both national and European level, they need the help of technology in order to meet translation requirements. Our work represents an important step in this direction.’’

In addition to assisting the translators working in Rannóg an Aistriúcháin, this data has also been used to improve the quality of eTranslation, which is used not only by Irish translators at the European Commission but also available to anyone working in the Irish public sector.

Dr Lynn continued: “We are really delighted to show how our work in DCU could help to facilitate technological progress within Rannóg an Aistriucháin. This project also demonstrates that through our combined efforts we can help further support our language in this digital age, both at national and European levels.”

Work on producing these valuable translation files was carried out as part of the EU funded PRINCIPLE project (Providing Resources in Irish, Norwegian, Croatian and Icelandic for Purposes of Language Engineering), which focused on gathering, processing and sharing Languages Resources (LRs) such as translation documents for Norwegian (Nynorsk and Bokmål), Croatian, Irish and Icelandic. 

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