INTUITIVE GAELIC COMPUTING TERMINOLOGY

A critique of, and an alternative to, the official Irish Gaelic terminology

Ciarán Ó Duibhín

There is a right way and a wrong way to create terminology in any language. The right way is this. Suppose a native speaker of the language observed the idea, and had its meaning and working explained to him, but without attaching a name to the idea, either in English or in any other language. What would he call it? Examples of such intuitive terms in Irish Gaelic include staighre beo (escalator) and inneall sioctha (refrigerator). The wrong way is to start from the name of the idea in some other language.

      "Labhair 'sa' dóigh a dtuigfear thú agus na bí a' déanamh úsáid' de na foclaí móra sin!"
      — Uaigheanna Chill Mhóirne, lch 365

(Official Irish computing terms are taken from FR: Foclóir Ríomhaireachta is Teicneolaíocht Faisnéise, An Gúm, 2004, and occasionally from the earlier TR: Téarmaí Ríomhaireachta, An Gúm, 1990; while a few other transient official forms are quoted from TRS: an unpublished supplement to TR, from An Gúm in 1999.) 

In creating computing terminology in Irish Gaelic, we have an opportunity to make learning about computing through Gaelic a rewarding experience.  This will be the case if our terms are chosen to suggest to the Gaelic speaker the concepts which they represent.  On the other hand, terms which are produced by some consideration other than the ideas which they provoke in the mind of the Gaelic speaker, and the relevance of those ideas to the concepts represented, just create an extra layer of difficulty for the Gaelic-speaking student. But some of the official terms seem to have been designed, not for the benefit of the Gaelic-speaker at all, but for the English-speaker, to whom they suggest an English term through formal similarity. To my mind, designing a Gaelic terminology to facilitate the English speaker with a Gaelic dictionary rather than the Gaelic speaker is self-evidently energy misplaced.

Let us consider a few examples.  Firstly, why call a key of a keyboard an eochair (FR 254)? An eochair is something that grants access, normally by turning in a lock, and computers may have them too.  English uses the same word key for a cnaipe on a keyboard, but other languages do not confuse the two ideas, certainly not French or German, and certainly not Gaelic.  Or secondly, imagine a native speaker of continuity Gaelic, knowing that a clár is something characterised by a flat, smooth and usually hard surface, who is looking at a computer while listening to a user of standard terminology talking about the ríomhchlár.  How would he guess that the reference is to an abstraction, a sequence of instructions laid down by a human for the machine to follow (FR 296 sub program)?  My suggested term for a computer program is ríomhoideas, around which a satisfying semantic field can be constructed (which does not make computer programmers sound like carpenters' apprentices).  Or thirdly, compare the official timfhilleadh giotánra (FR 347) for word wrap with my suggested slánfhoclacht.  The essential thing about wordwrap — a simply grasped and non-technical idea — is that text which is too wide for the physical line is broken into lines of text, each shorter than the physical line, such that each text line contains only complete words (words in the focal sense, nothing whatever to do with giotánra).

Furthermore, it must be realised that computing terminology in English is a bad model to follow.  It is poorly structured and often capricious, as a consequence of having grown, and continuing to grow, without control.  Among the consequences are, firstly, the existence of multiple English terms for a single concept, arising from rival commercial or academic backgrounds.  Secondly, a term may shift its meaning as concepts develop, and may no longer mean what it (etymologically) says. Thirdly, terms may be named with an element of wordplay — virtual reality is an example; to ignore this and translate them "seriously" produces bizarre results.

The first two of these drawbacks may be readily understood by an example from the geographical domain. An English term which does not mean what it says (and in fact, never did) is longitude. It may be derived from long, but its meaning has nothing to do with linear length. Rather, it refers to the angular lateral (ie. east or west) extent of a location on a sphere relative to some standard orientation, a concept that in other contexts is called azimuth. Yet the official Irish term for longitude is domhanfhad, fixated on length; and the Irish for a line of longitude is líne dhomhanfhaid, even though all lines of longitude have the same length (and all great circles have double this length), and there is no kind of line from which a line of longitude need be distinguished solely on grounds of length. Further, the desire to imitate multiple English terms is shown by the fact that meridian, which is synonymous with line of longitude, is rendered fadlíne in official Irish, though a single term would suffice for both. All this may help a native speaker of English who is struggling to learn geography through Irish, but to take these terms on board, an Irish speaker needs to unlearn the real meaning of fad. Irish computer terminology is replete with similar cases.

Creating Gaelic computing terminology by translating English terms literally root-by-root just reproduces the systematic faults of the English, and even accentuates them through loss of conciseness.  It serves no purpose if learners of computing through Gaelic cannot assume that the terms they meet carry meanings related to their natural meaning as Gaelic words, but instead have to be root-translated back to English, reversing the process by which they were created, and the meaning of the concept learned through the resulting English.

Rather, what we must strive to do is understand the meanings of the concepts, and express those meanings in natural Gaelic.  This requires both inspiration and reflection — good terminology cannot be bulk-composed on demand.  However, we need not start entirely from scratch, for other languages before us have constructed computing terminology more or less deliberately in this way—if we must have etymological translation of computer terms, we would be better to translate them from such a language (e.g. French) than from English.

The list which follows began as a collection of cases where the official Irish Gaelic terms fail to meet the criteria of helpfully suggesting the meaning of the concepts they label (including some of the most basic concepts of the subject), or in some cases are translations of a misinterpretation of the English term.  Linked notes have been provided in cases where explanation is felt to be important, including many of the fundamental cases which have brought about the existence of this list.

In an effort to make the list more generally useful, it has been expanded, partly by taking in some of the many acceptable and useful terms from the official lists. Consequently, the reason for its existence has become less conspicuous, but remains unchanged and urgent. Of course the list is still very far from being comprehensive for any area of computing. I reserve the right to improve any of the terms in this file as a result of further reflection — terms signalled by question marks are particularly likely to be impermanent.

I have tried to render English acronyms by meaningful terms which are short enough to require no abbreviation — an acronym makes, in general, a poor term.

It is sometimes necessary, in the constrained screen space of the menu option or button label or icon title, to employ terms which would be unsuitable in normal prose; forms marked "menu" or "button" or "icon" are intended for use in such confined spaces.

Some effort has also been devoted to providing terms which could be used in Scotland as well as in Ireland, and further comments and suggestions in this regard are particularly welcome.

Some insightful suggestions from the late Breandán Ó Mearáin are gratefully acknowledged.

My period of work in assessing the drafting of Irish-medium ICT examination papers for the Northern Ireland Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment (NICCEA) has provided a welcome stimulus in sustaining the development of this list, by challenging me to find meaningful ways of expressing computing ideas in simple and practical contexts.

Is ionann deis agus deagh-eagar. Deir Seamus 'ac Grianna: bhéarfainn a bhfaca mé riamh ar a bheith ábalta deis a chur ar mo sheanchus agus craiceann a chur ar mo chuid cainnte mar ghníodh [m'athair] (Nuair a bhí mé óg, 1942, lch 20). Ní hionann deis agus "repair" — nuair a deir Seosamh 'ac Grianna go rabh Eoghan Ruadh Ó Néill ag brath deis eile a chur ar léarsgáil na hEorpa (Eoghan Ruadh Ó Néill, 1931, lch 10) chan é go rabh sé á shamhlú ag teacht agus an sellotape ina láimh leis!

The term "flat file" is used when an entire database is stored in a single database file, rather than in a relational set of database files; this may require the data to be "flattened" (leathnaithe, leacaithe) by redundantly repeating the same field value over a number of records. All database files, whether flat or not, consist of records which consist of fields; they are emphatically not téacschomhaid  (FR 231 has téacschomhad simplí for "flat file").

FR 251 has léirmhínitheoir for interpreter. But an interpreter does not "mínigh" (explain or paraphrase) a program as it reads it. It executes it.

pack br: cnuasaigh isteach, m.sh. i gcnuas-chomhad
package — see "application"
pad, tracker afh: mullóg leanta, maológ leanta
page, home afh: duilleog chinn, clár cinn (Fr. page d'accueil, Ger. Hauptseite, Sp. página inicial)
page, web afh: duilleog ghréasáin, clár gréasáin
palm-top computer — see "computer, palm-top"
parallel aid: comh-uaineach
parallel port — see "port, parallel"
parameter afh
    1. setting, option: rogha — see "configuration 2"
    2. parameter (in a sub-program heading): ceann-athróg
    3. parameter (more general sense, like "independent variable"): saor-athróg
password afh: eochair-fhocal, focal rúnda
pause button — see "audio/video controls"
perfection afh: (aspect of software maintainance) foirfiú
platform afh: dubhshraith
platform, hardware afh: cruaidh-dhubhshraith
platform, software afh: bog-dhubhshraith
play button — see "audio/video controls"
pop-up aid — see "menu", "menu option"
port afh: béalóg
port, parallel afh: béalóg chomh-uaineach
port, serial afh: béalóg shraitheach
port, printer afh: béalóg priontála
preferences — see "configuration 2"
preview afh: réamhspléachadh
previous button — see "navigation"
print, draft-quality afh: cló garbh
print, near-letter-quality (NLQ) afh: cló mín
printer afh: inneall priontála, inneal cló
printer, inkjet afh: scaird-inneall (priontála)
printer, laser afh: inneall (priontála) léasair
printer port — see "port, printer"
procedure — see "sub-program"
process afh: próiséas
processor afh
    1. hardware (e.g. central processor): próiseálán
    2. software (e.g. word processor): próiseálaí
program afh: (ríomh-)oideas
    see also under "demo", "utility", "application", "source"
program suite — see "suite, program"
programmer afh: cumadóir ríomh-oideas
programming afh: cumadóireacht ríomh-oideas
prompt afh: broideadh
prompt message, prompt text afh: lideadh
proportional spacing — see "spacing, proportional"
proportionally-spaced — see "spaced, proportionally-"