AS anyone who has ever relied on Google Translate to help with a piece of French homework or a Spanish assignment will have discovered, the results often leave much to be desired. The new Gaelic service is no different in this respect.
It can handle simple phrases and even some of the more complex sentence constructions. However, even colloquial greetings such as “Shin thu fhein”, closest to the English “It’s yourself”, is given as “There yourself”.
A Gaelic speaker can see the source of these mistakes. The upper hand – “làmh an uachdair”, is given as “hand cream”, which is understandable to a Gael, as “uachdair” means both the top and cream. But a mistake whose origin you can spot remains a mistake.
Of course poetry suffers most cruelly at Google’s hands. Readers of The National may recall that Prof Alan Riach’s new translation of Donnchadh Bàn Mac an t-Saoir’s Moladh Beinn Dòbhrain opens more lyrically, and more accurately, than Translate’s attempt, which offers: “The honour all over the mountain Ben Doran”. Neither is Somhairle MacGill-Eain’s Hallaig prefaced by the line “This time, the deer, the forest Hallaig”.
On the positive, it does open up the possibility of translating simple Gaelic phrases not only into and from English but also 101 other languages. Today I can find out what the Igbo for gealaich is, or what “Is mise Calum” looks like in Persian without having to first translate it into English. Who knows what speakers of non-English languages will make of their access to Gaelic.
Machine translation such as Google’s will never match that of a human fluent in both tongues for the simple reason that translation is not an equation – it is an art form. That said, this new resource, which very few people even really asked for, does provide new opportunities and could be used to help raise the status of the language which is a key factor in language revitalisation efforts.
Scots Gaelic one of 13 new languages on Google Translate
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