Developing high-end reusable tools and resources for Irish-language terminology, lexicography, onomastics (toponymy), folkloristics, and more, using modern web and database technologies

Abstract

Irish, a low-resourced lesser-used language, is striving to punch above its weight when it comes to some of the digital language tools and resources available to its users. High-tech language tools and resources for Irish are being developed in a number of universities in Ireland and elsewhere, in language technology areas relating to search, parsing, proofing, speech, translation, etc. (Judge at al., 2012). This paper aims to highlight work done by researchers at Fiontar, Dublin City University (DCU), to make a number of valuable Irish-language terminological, lexicographical, onomastic, and folkloristic data stocks more readily accessible, usable, and manageable using web and database technologies. Tools built with these technologies have facilitated the re-organisation, distributed development, and more widespread dissemination of these data stocks, as well as the creation of new data stocks. These language tools, which are on a par with tools that are available to users of well-resourced languages (take for example the online interface of the multilingual terminology database of the European Union, IATE: http://iate.europa.eu/), are now enabling Irish language users, language professionals, and linguists operate in an environment similar to that of their major language counterparts. The public interfaces of all Irish-language tools and resources developed by Fiontar are made available at http://www.gaois.ie/.