I will never slag off google again.
Heads up to Dubhaltach mac Éamon Óig, mhic Éamoin, mhic Sheáin, mhic Mhártain Óig, mhic Mhártain, mhic Tomáis Uí Reachtair. Folks, I will never slag off Google again, I will never have to read in English again!
And non-Gaelic speakers will be able to see (approximately) what we Gaeil are saying, ok, it is not perfect, far from it, but it is a start and I am sure it will be refined.
All is changed, changed utterly.
Update : I know this is childish but I just could not help myself
Tags: Gaeilge
It’s not perfect but it’s a super service.
Great way for monoglots to find out what Gaels are talking about, and great way for us to access info in our own language, from any language.
I can even read the News Letter now
Yesterday, on this thread
http://sluggerotoole.com/index.php/weblog/comments/methinks-the-lady-doth-protest-too-much/
It’s been there for a while, btw…
I have to say what does to poor Alan Titley’s prose in today’s Irish in English is painful…
I think it’s been up for a few days and they’re still working on it, but still.
“TaithĂ. Prionsabal. Ionracas.”
Totally correct, Jim has no excuses now not to branch out to his Gaelic-speaking brothers and sisters!
Mack,
I realise that now, but I had been offline for a while up to a couple of days ago.
Big tip to those writting in Irish, it cannot handle dialect, if you want to remain untranslatable just keep it in Ulster Irish etc, if you want it to be easily understood – go for standard spelling.
RG Cuan -
They’re translation engine translates via statistical inferencing -i.e. it learns. They’ve probably trained it up with a set of Irish translations. Beyond this point they’ll be relying on users – you can provide a better translation on a per word or phrase basis. The engine should learn from this and the quality of the translations improve. The more people contribute, the better it will get.
http://www.google.com/intl/en/help/faq_translation.html#statmt
Mick,
If my understanding is correct then users can help to refine things.
If it can help people get the jist – great.
And Alan writes well beyond the Standard, so like I said above, if people want to be translatable, they can keep it tight, but it will always be easy to confuse the program with classicalisms and dialect.
Just going to blog Alan’s piece on Europe so people can try it out… gets stuck on a lot of his huge and specialist word store… and his lyrical prose style just seems to confuse it…
That is so cool, I may have to go back to my studies of Irish. Go raibh maith agat!
By the GGN, some might say you were too easily paid off re Google…
http://smarterware.org/2755/if-google-was-your-roommate-the-web-series
“Great way for monoglots to find out what Gaels are talking about”
Or even those of us who are fluent in other world languages apart from English but who were never really given the chance to learn our other “native” tongue.
This is brilliant. Well done to whomever is responsible.
Absolutely terrific!
It’s not far off is it?
Brilliant tool & great fun