New study on the Irish experience of terminology for the European Union

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terminology-iate-gaA new study, Terminology for the European Union. The Irish Experience: The GA IATE Project, compiled by Fiontar, DCU and published by Cló Iar-Chonnacht, is now available to the public. This bi-lingual (Irish and English) publication offers a comprehensive overview of the work of terminology accomplished through the GA IATE Project.

This initiative was established in 2007 by the Irish government, in collaboration with Fiontar, the Department of Arts, Heritage and Gaeltacht and the European Institutions, following the accession of Irish as an official EU language.

Although the nation established Irish as its first and English as its second official language in the 1937 Constitution, the latter was adopted for practical reasons as the official language by the European Communities when Ireland joined them in 1973.

Ireland has since then been fighting for the official use of its language as when the country voted in 2001 a law ensuring that the Acts of Oireachtas (primary legislation) are available both in English and Irish. The 2004 Irish Presidency of the Council of the European Union was also the occasion to promote the campaign for the insertion of Irish as an official language of the European Union. The status finally came into effect in 2007.

As the study shows “the GA IATE project has been a success in its basic aim of providing timely and reliable Irish terminology to translators and in increasing the store of Irish-language overall in the database. As a tool for the Irish translation staff, IATE with its current stock of Irish terms is clearly a tool much enhanced from its value before this project commenced”.

Indeed, since the start of the project in 2008, about 55,000 terminological entries have been processed and returned to IATE, expanding significantly the domain base of Irish-language terminology, particularly in finance and data protection. Moreover, according to the study, Irish has now the second largest number of terms in IATE compared to the other new EU languages (languages that became official after 2004).

Terminology for the European Union. The Irish Experience: The GA IATE Project also presents a complete overview of the history of IATE, the multilingual, interinstitutional terminology database of the EU, and its future developments. The terminology work in the new languages in the three European Institutions (European Parliament, Commission and Council), as well as their collaboration, have also been covered.

The publication is available to purchase on the Cló Iar-Chonnacht website and selected bookshops.

Article written by Floriane Loup, trainee at TermCoord