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> Google translate does a just about acceptable job on Indo European languages. Diverge a little further and it often descends into comically poor. Not even a

> Google translate does a just about acceptable job on Indo European languages. Diverge a little further and it often descends into comically poor. Not even all Indo-European ones. It's absolutely awful at trying to translate to and from Irish, for instance.

xxpor 8y ago
Probably because it doesn't have full official status at the EU. Google has a ton of data for EU languages because documents have to be translated between them all.
- dorchadas 8y ago
  It's an official language, but not a full _working_ language, something which seems to be slated to change within the next few years. In my personal opinion, however, knowing the quality of "Irish" [1] that the translators will have, is that it still won't really help translation all that much if you wish to actually communicate with native speakers. [1] There's a huge rift forming in Irish between the "Gaelscoilis" or "Urban Irish" that is learnt and passed on by non-native speakers and that which is passed on in the traditional areas. Unfortunately, there's also a lack of communication between the two areas, partly because they struggle to understand each other; natives from the traditional area often have to translate the non-traditional speakers' Irish to English in order to understand the meaning, for instance. There's also the fact that the people creating the legal terms for the language often don't really have a firm grasp on the history or nuances of various words or the language, and are often themselves not native speakers. This led to a funny incident where they translated "dental hygienist" as "toothed hygienist" in the official dictionary of new terms. It's also likely to lead to a "Neo-Irish" that is completely divorced from the language as used in the Gaeltachtaí (traditional speaking areas); one linguist has even gone so far as to say it'll be "Irish in English drag", which looks truer and truer when you look at the errors they make and pass on.

xxpor 8y ago

Probably because it doesn't have full official status at the EU. Google has a ton of data for EU languages because documents have to be translated between them all.

dorchadas 8y ago
It's an official language, but not a full _working_ language, something which seems to be slated to change within the next few years. In my personal opinion, however, knowing the quality of "Irish" [1] that the translators will have, is that it still won't really help translation all that much if you wish to actually communicate with native speakers. [1] There's a huge rift forming in Irish between the "Gaelscoilis" or "Urban Irish" that is learnt and passed on by non-native speakers and that which is passed on in the traditional areas. Unfortunately, there's also a lack of communication between the two areas, partly because they struggle to understand each other; natives from the traditional area often have to translate the non-traditional speakers' Irish to English in order to understand the meaning, for instance. There's also the fact that the people creating the legal terms for the language often don't really have a firm grasp on the history or nuances of various words or the language, and are often themselves not native speakers. This led to a funny incident where they translated "dental hygienist" as "toothed hygienist" in the official dictionary of new terms. It's also likely to lead to a "Neo-Irish" that is completely divorced from the language as used in the Gaeltachtaí (traditional speaking areas); one linguist has even gone so far as to say it'll be "Irish in English drag", which looks truer and truer when you look at the errors they make and pass on.