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FOR THOUSANDS OF years, beneath Egypt’s desert sands, a solidified whitish substance sat in a broken jar.
Scientists now say it’s “probably the most ancient archaeological solid residue of cheese ever found”.
However, any fans of smelly cheese might need to hang on – it could kill you.
Archaeologists came across the finding while cleaning the sands around a 19th dynasty tomb at the vast Saqqara necropolis of the ancient city of Memphis.
The tomb of Ptahmes, the mayor of ancient Memphis, was initially discovered in 1885 but had been swallowed by shifting sands until its rediscovery in 2010.
The whitish solidified mass was found during the excavation work between 2013 and 2014, along with a canvas fabric which may have been used to cover the jar, possibly to preserve its contents, a study published this week in Analytical Chemistry said.
The 3,200-year-old cheese was found to be made from a mixture of cow milk and that of a sheep or goat. Enrico Greco, the study’s lead author, said:
[The sample] was subjected to thousands of cycles of hydration and de-hydration due to the rainfalls and the Nile floods and also the very strong alkaline environment transformed all the fats and it was not possible to use conventional techniques.
Cheese-making has been depicted on wall murals of ancient Egyptian tombs from 2,000 BC, and a 2012 study published in the science journal Nature traces the earliest evidence of the industry to the 6th millennium BC in northern Europe, some 7,000 years ago.
Older cheese residues discovered were typically attributed to natural fermented milk like yoghurt or kefir, but the discovery at Saqqara revealed no trace of proteins from natural milk fermentation, Greco said.
“For this reason we can say that it is the oldest solid cheese ever found to date,” he concluded.
There is little information on this particular cheese-making process but “it was necessary to develop a specific technology and procedures that did not exist before,” Greco said.
This is a very important point in the history of dairy food.
Among the study’s significant findings were the signs of bacteria potentially causing the deadly disease brucellosis, caught through the consumption of unpasteurized dairy products. If confirmed, it would be “the first biomolecular direct evidence” of the disease’s existence during the pharaonic period, according to the study.
“Brucellosis in ancient Egypt has been identified by the osteoarticular effects on mummies’ bones,” Greco said. The finding may suggest that ‘Egyptians ate contaminated cheese or milk’.
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Why bother wasting money on this? No one is ever going to read any piece of legislation that is translated into Irish.
Some people do. Normally they are the very same people that have been caught for drink driving or some other charge and demand the Irish version to get out of jail – literally.
They also tend to fall on the floor in hysterical convulsions, froth from the mouth, shit themselves too, if anyone suggests we get rid of nuacht.
Google translate?
What a waste of money and resources.
The problem with Irish is the way it’s taught. I can’t speak Irish but learnt German in 6 months and completed an apprenticeship in Germany which took 3.5 years
This is a total waste of time and money. The money would be better spent teaching Irish people to learn useful languages spoken by hundreds of millions of people in emerging and important markets such as Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese and Russian.
Euro 12 million spent training students to translate useless documents none will ever read in Irish. Wow. How many people had to cut spending to pay tax for this utter nonsense?
Serious question, how the hell do we spend 13 years learning Irish and still the vast majority of us can’t speak it . The teachers and the department of Education have some serious questions to answer about this fiasco. There is obviously a problem with the way we are taught the language, and that was obvious 20 years ago. Have their been much improvements of late in students proficiency levels or are they still the same as I remember them to be, which were abysmal.
Pat, I think it’s because there is something fundamentally wrong with expecting children to read and write a language, before they can even speak it, never mind the 300 exceptions to every grammar rule.
I can speak Irish. But I didn’t learn it in school. Learning a language in school is a waste of time unless they are going to introduce some level of immersion, to allow the children to pick up the language naturally and use it in an organic setting.
If you want your children to be able to speak Irish, at present the only real option is sending them to a Gaelscoil.
As for the argument about Irish being useless, it’s not something I bother to waste my time on anymore. I get as much use out of Irish as any other language. If some people feel it’s useless, fine. I support freedom of expression. But it has historical significance, and nobody else will save it.
I think people would be less apathetic about Irish if they saw results being produced in schools, where a significant portion of children became fluent. Nobody wants to spend 13 years learning a language if they can’t speak it at the end of it.
@ David
We can’t just think about the economic benefits of everything all the time. We are social beings not merely economic entities.gaeilge is part of our culture and while you may not speak it or have an interest in I absolutely do.i speak it on a regular basis and wish more people would use the little bits they have in shops, with their kids etc. I do also agree that more emphasis needs to be put on the oral part of the language in schools to make it more enjoyable and practical
The north seems to have got this right with a number of Gaelscoils cropping up, especially along the north coast in places like Limavady. On top of that they have introduced a Cert in Irish Immersion for those teaching in the schools.
Pat, I was at a conference last week that answered your question to a degree.
Irish as a second language is taught rather than acquired through immersion (the most efficient and effective model outside of the home) in national schools.
The period 0-6 in a child life is the most important time for language acquisition – during this period the average human brain can withhold up to 5 languages with relative ease (unfortunately due geopolitical and historic reasons languages are often paired against each other and more importance is given to the dominant language making it an uphill struggle even if the child is given the opportunity at an early stage).
Hence, most schools don’t start “teaching” Irish until what first or second class, is it? The teachers with a greater grasp and passion for the language are generally working in Gaelscoileanna as you would expect therefore those with less appreciation/grasp of the language tend to gravitate to the mainly english-medium national school (generalisation, yes but backed up by recent studies on Irish in the school system).
If you are taught something by someone who isn’t interested in a subject and has only a basic grasp of it, and where you aren’t shown a context for its use outside of that classroom, what is the likelihood that you continue practicing/using that language after/outside of school.
The current national school and secondary system ensures that only a very small minority will ever leave school with a functional level of Irish or any other language.
It is a failed system but the political will isn’t there to change it, to use international best practice as they’re currently doing in the Basque Country because too many people still have hang-ups about the language.
Until we get rid of the chip on the shoulder regarding the Irish language, only piecemeal change is likely to happen.
Does that justify the huge amount of money that will be spent on translating these documents into a language which only a handful of people will ever read? I know Irish is part of our culture, but where should the line into insanity be drawn? If only 100,000 people spoke Irish, would that merit spending this obscene amount of money – bearing in mind that only a tiny proportion of those 100,000 are ever likely to read these documents anyway? Also, how many Irish speakers are you aware of who can’t also speak English (or any of the other languages of the EU spoken by millions, into which these documents are already translated)? If you want to keep the language alive, that’s fine. By all means speak it, write it, and have those ridiculous road signs in both languages. Tune in to TG4 and spend your holidays in the Gaeltacht. But when it comes to translating these obtuse, arcane documents into a language that has all but died (and I’m convinced that it will, it’s only a matter of time), please don’t use my taxes to fund it.
Every citizen of EU counties contributes 2 euro of tax a year which is allocated for EU translation services. Regardless of Irish being an official language or not we still have to pay this money. Of course I would rather see the money spent on language planning initiatives to strengthen Irish language use in communities but in reality that’s not a choice in this particular situation.
12 million, how many medical cards would that get?
I would actually argue that keeping the Irish language is more important. After been self employed and having no medical card even after things went south and haven to pay for medical insurance I still think our Irish heritage should be protected. A lot of Irish people tend to forget where we came from just because English is our first language
Multiculturalism is our future, wake up and smell the roses Francie.
Multiculturalism without Irish?
Francis, you can keep the language without artificially pumping blood into its rotting corpse. And we know where we come from through culture and history. I can say for certain that I can hold a conversation better in Swedish, Hebrew, Arabic, Japanese and Dutch better than I could in Irish, purely because I wanted to learn those languages to understand the cultures where I worked, whereas no matter how hard I tried, I could not fathom the need for Irish in our education system. I have no problem with giving assistance to the Gaeltacht to keep it alive there, but this absolutely useless translation for the EU and bilingual enforcement of every other aspect of public life just leaves a bad taste.
@Francis
And how exactly is spending millions of Euros on translating documents that nobody is reading in the first place, regardless of the language, helping the Irish heritage?
Let’s shoot all native speakers and embrace every other culture – or maybe we could accommodate them all, including cultúr na hÉireann. Cad faoi sin?
Nothing new here. The kleptocracy continues. We spend years learning the Irish language in school, and we still can’t speak it so we have to hire translators. What a fcuking joke.
Bin the Irish language. Let Michael D and those in the Gaeltacht worry about its ‘cultural’ significance.
And btw, don’t forget to factor in the cost of teaching Irish in schools to a nation that can’t speak it.
Latin is more relevant than Irish ffs.
I wouldn’t agree that we should bin it at all and would describe it’s relevance or importance as narrowly as you do. However, if we are going to use and continue the charade that it’s our “first” language then quite simply we need to do a lot more than pay it the (costly) lip service we do today. If we want to make it relevant we must spend the money we currently spend on it much much differently.
How we approach it in our education system is the primary area of concern. The strategy, whatever that might be isn’t working.
Personally I’d love to see Irish play a much bigger role in everyday life, but that won’t be achieved in the way we’re going about it. All we are doing is making business more expensive with no real benefit to the Irish language
How about we stop spending money on it altogether?
Sounds good Eric. Noted. Thank you debt slave minion.
Back in your coffin.
Good to see that deputy flanagan has an oppinion on something ,he has being very quiet since he has become a TD.
can someone tell me what irish culture ????? Pint pub ….. Ect
All my nieces and nephews learnt Irish in there first year in a gaelscoil in Dublin. My daughter starts in a gaelscoil in dublin this year and is looking forward to being able to talk to her cousins in Irish. Immersion is the best way to learn a language.
yep, Gaelscoil = waiting list of a few years to get your kids in for advantage.
How bout this. Teach them yourself.
And when they go for a job interview in NY or Sydney, make sure you tell them how useful it is.
@Vvladislav.
I’ll give you a way to make it “relevant” – stop force feeding our children with it. Make it optional.
What doesn’t work is shoving it down their throats. That much is indisputable.
‘To hell or Connaught’ with Irish speakers. We hate them. Get them into the Gaeltacht and build a big wall around it. They should all be shot because they are just a burden and a financial hindrance. Their culture should be extirpated from the face of Ireland.
Have we ever heard this kind of thing before Adolf?
Ní féidir praghas a chur ar theanga ársa na tíre s’againne, ach ba chóir go mbeifeá in ann srian a choinneáil ar an aineolas agus ar an easpa tuisceana dod’ chomhmhuintir a léiríonn tú go poiblí anseo!
Outside of the home.
Fantastic idea. In fact you should pilot it in France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Japan, China and any other Country that English isn’t the first Language, or Primarily Used Day – to – Day one. The difference between us and the other Countries is how they were approached. For us, Foreign Laws and Customs were forced on us. with other Countries, the Local Laws and Customs were embraced and shown the respect they deserve. And don’t forget the Americas, that’s ” South America “, just so you know. If you’re successful with those ventures, then come back to me and I’ll take you seriously.
Tír gan teanga. Tír gan anam. Sin é a chairde.
Ní aontaím leat. Féach ar an mBeilg. Tá an Fhraincis agus an Ollainis acu. Níl aon “Bheilgis” á labhairt acu. Agus, is í an Ghearmáinis teanga na hOstaire. Táim ar taobh na Gaeilge, ach is sean nós an frása sin; nós na sean laethanta.
@Brian Níl a fhios agam. Ní dhéanann compráid idir an Bheilg/an Oistir le Éireann. Is oileán bheag aisti féin í Éire, seachas a bheith I bhfastú i measc tíortha eile ar an mór-rinn. Tá sé éasca le tuiscint go mbeadh teangacha eile labhartha iontu. Tá muide inár n-aonar amuigh san Atlantach agus mar sin feileann sé go mbeadh ár dteanga dúchasach labhartha go rialta.
An Bheilg? I ndáiríre? Tá an áit sin ag titim as a chéile. Is cósúil nach mairfidh sé ar chor ar bith taobh istigh scór bliain. Mar sin – is ea tír gan teanga, tír gan anam. An ceart ag Peadar.
Cá bhfuil an bosca brúscar?
Is ar Phléimeannais atá tú ag cuimhniú, a Bhriain. Labhraítear Fraincis na Beilge, Pléimeannais agus Gearmáinis sa mBeilig.
Tádar gaolta ach ní mar a chéile iad. Ar nós Gaeilge agus Gáidhlig.
You are thinking of Flemish, Brian. Belgian French, Flemish and German are spoken in Belgium.
They are related but not the same. Like Irish and Scottish.
As batman would say “Holy Mó Conaíllach”
I was going to comment what an absolute waste of money, but everyone else beat me to it.
The attitude is shocking. The tiny little scrap of heritage we have left is a ‘farce’ or ‘waste of money’. Perhaps we should abolish our place names and replace them with silly clichéd names. People are on about abolishing our LANGUAGE and hence our culture. Shameful. Is é teanga do anam!
Both of my parents have a very modest level of Irish, they can understand it pretty well, my mothers side would have been fairly immersed coming from near a Gaeltacht area but none of my fathers siblings spoke it at all. I went to an Irish-speaking primary and secondary school, primary because it was only 2 minutes from my house, and secondary because all of my friends went there, grá don teanga didn’t really come into it. I went on to study Irish at university with history, loved history, hated Irish for the most part, and for the first time, mainly because it was all 16th century / 17th century literature, but the 20th century stuff was very enjoyable.
I’ve visited the gaeltacht’s many times, mostly in Kerry, and have made an effort to speak the language, which I’m fairly fluent in, with locals, I’ve had mixed experiences, some respond in English to my Irish, and some peoples faces light up and share a drink with me (Ring in Waterford being the most welcoming).
I love the language, but on a very personal level. I think the Irish language is controlled by a cabal, people who turn their noses up at you if your grammar isn’t 100% snasta, I don’t have time for any of that sh*te. I’ll read the Irish books I like, I’ll speak it freely without worrying about what others think of my standard and I’ll admire it’s history.
Where am I going with all this? The money being spent on translation is a terrible waste, as is the money spent on making everything bilingual, if the majority of a local community want their signs in Irish as well as English, that’s fine, but in areas where English is the predominantly spoken language then there is no need, maybe with the exception of our city centres where it’s nice for the tourists, and a little reminder for ourselves. There is a huge amount of funding to support Irish in this country and I personally feel that money could be better spent on other more humane needs, having said that, is this expenditure insignificant in comparison to what’s been put into banks, foreign aid budgets etc. etc.
My final thought is that we need to let the Irish language take it’s natural course, if there is an appetite for it to survive, it will survive, if there isn’t, we shouldn’t be propping it up artificially by throwing money at it, I also don’t think it should be a mandatory subject at secondary level, let those who want to study it excel, and let those who don’t excel at another subject. This is the way of the world. If my wife, also a Dub, but working with the language, reads this, she will kill me. :)
I agree. either it stands on its own two feet or it goes on the dole. And it’s been on the dole plus rent allowance, grants, schemes, school tours, and every other perk for far too long – lets see how long it lasts in the real world.
Well said Gaius, I went to an Irish primary school and still try to use it when I can. Dated a girl who works with the language for a while and was made feel like a leper around her friends whenever I tried to use (abuse) THEIR language.
€12m spent teaching the few Irish speakers we have to translate? These guys are graduates. Is our third level teaching as bad as our primary and secondary?
End this farce now.
If the “more than 243 graduates” is actually 244 graduates then you’re looking at the thick-end of €45k per graduate. And that after they have, supposedly, spent their school life learning the language. Sounds as though something is badly wrong in the Language Teaching Dept.
That was my thought also. How can we spend that much on a language course?
Third level education is just that – it’s education, not teaching. The difference is a moot point.
However – to translate documents into legal jargon IS very different from straight translation. The difference indeed between fixing yer bike and fixing yer car.
To translate into legalese takes a totally different set of language skills.
You may disagree that the language is being taught wrong and /or that 12m is being spent on translating EU documents but I think regardless it is an integral part of our dwindling culture. The EU have officially recognised the language so I suppose the remit lands on us to translate to our own language.
Personally I admire anyone who can speak Irish. I know many people who have come over to Ireland to specifically learn our language most citing the poetic and evocative nature of it.
Tá brón orm – there is sadness on me. for example. Such nice phraseology.
It could be worse. It could be being translated into Ulster Scots.
Well you may define my culture by the Irish language, or GAA, or a field, or anything you like.
But I don’t. So my culture as an Irishman born and raised is not defined by what you think our culture is.
You want your kids to learn it. Great. I won’t oppose it. So don’t oppose mine NOT learning it.
I certainly wouldn’t oppose your decision NOT to teach your kids Irish and nor did my post even suggest it. GAA? a field? Sorry?
I do not define my culture by the Irish language and again nor did my post suggest it…. I do however have to insist that it is part of our culture and heritage whether or not you or I like it.
.”You may disagree that the language is being taught wrong”
The point is it shouldn’t be ”taught” at all. Let those to want to learn it seek. Let them learn from books the very same dead defunct language, and take it up with the authors of the history book your opposition to the the teaching techniques.
Hey you ya hoor ya. Whadya maen it cud bay worse? Usens spakin the true langwage o the Ulster hinterlaun wud spank yer behin way a houl clatter a stecks!!!
Is that not beautiful to the ear?
Ní Albainis Uladh teanga ar ndóigh. Tá sé a lán de na bruscar aois.
Played Robin :)
Who uses calculus on a daily basis. Dump it. Who uses thermodynamics on a daily basis, dump that too, Brilliant Luke, lets not teach anybody anything and save a fortune, then we can loll about in our own ignorant squalor and throw shit at each other.
I would hazard a guess that the utility of thermodynamics and calculus is marginally greater than that of Irish. But maybe I’m wrong.
I did enjoy your comment though, very funny!
The national contempt for the Irish language never ceases to amaze me. You do realise that pockets of the country speak Irish every single day and carry out their business through Irish? Talk about cultural ignorance.
Pog mo thoin….
Waste of money
I’d rather spend the money filling pot holes, or just give it away for future top-ups.
This is sort of redundant, I don’t see why anything would need to be translated into a different language that we don’t even use or need.
That you or I won’t use.
What about the people who speak Irish in everyday life?
This is a disgrace
Jesus, Flanagan’s my local TD. Not for much longer, thank Christ. I must be the only Fine Gaeler in Ireland welcoming the return of some of Fianna Fail’s safe seats.
What a complete and utter waste of miney
Money
Miney’s better
I fail to understand why people hate the Irish language so much. Plenty of countries have more then one Language and do perfectly fine. Look at the Chinese several dialects with massive differences more then just a change of the words sound. They are more then successful in life and do extremely well using both there home language and the English language. So this it’s no good in the working world I call bull on that!!
Irish has been forced down the throats of people who don’t want to learn it. That’s one reason I dislike it, but I’m not trying to stop people from learning it. As for Chinese, you are only partly correct. It is true that there are many different dialects, but the vast majority (if not all) use the same script, so although you may not understand what someone is saying, you will understand if they write it down. Irish is not like this. Besides, Chinese dialects have many millions of speakers. Irish would be lucky to muster more than two million, give or take.
Hello Michael,
Unfortunately you fail to see my point however thanks for the correction. Irish is not pointless it would not effect the country/person if they were to use it everyday. I have read and heard the argument on this site and others that if people were to use Irish Fluently every day it would send the country backwards cause the most common language in Business is English. I think that is BULLS**t
My point is plenty of other countries don’t have English as a first language and conduct business allot better then us that have English as a first language. Irish is part of our life and should always be. I can openly say I am I embarrassed by the fact I can’t speak my own native language as well as I should.
I do agree it is Rammed down throats. That is not the languages fault. I was in one school for three years and the teacher was amazing, made it interesting, immersed us in the language, in and out of class. I never heard the teacher speak a word of English in front of a us, and I had a fairly good grasp of the language in three years. I was very confident holding a conversation in Irish and read as well as English for my age and level at the time obviously, However I changed schools got a crap teacher and it was gone in one year. Learn this off, learn that off. Did not care as long as you could rhyme off what ever answer was required for the exam no matter if you understood it or not unfortunately that is the way it is in most schools. The first teacher was rare.
The language is just a novelty now. Let’s leave it at that until we sort out our real problems as a country.
I’ve said it before. Dig a big hole and bury it. It’s a disgraceful waste of time and money.
The sensible thing to do would be to abolish Irish altogether and concentrate on the next 2 essential languages, Spanish and Chinese, but common sense never prevails in Ireland
Ah come on, Spanish? Where are you going to get a job, in a powerhouse economy such as Spain, Mexico or Argentina? Think you might be 500 odd years too late with the auld Spanish
Learn Chinese? Is there a worldwide shortage of people who speak mandarin.
Forget Spanish. Portuguese is a better bet.
It’s stuff like this that makes the Brits want to get out of the EU.
We on the other hand don’t seem to care if we’re wasting money.
The EU needs to do something useful that the people want if it wants to keep people supporting it.
Yeah, and you do know that Welsh is the only official language in the UK, right? And that all UK legislation must be translated into Welsh, despite the fact that Welsh is only official in part of the UK?
Yeah well the EU wasting money on bureaucracy is the number one reason why people don’t like the institution.
Many Irish speakers probably think this is money well spent but I wonder is tax payers in Austria and Finland ect. would think this is value for money or worth the money.
I think it’s a total waste of money and I’m Irish. I think translating things into Welsh is a waste of time, effort and money too.
Brian, come the revolution………..
Irish speakers should have equal rights – or should we just ignore the rights of all minorities? Should everyone have to be Catholic just because the majority are Catholic?
Irish speakers pay their taxes too and for all the services through English. There is potential for jobs in this as the article suggests. What monoglot anglophile supremacists fail to see is that because of the failure of the state to provide services like this to Irish speakers, pressure has come on Irish speakers to become exclusively anglophone. If the services are provided it creates jobs, strengthens the language and creates rich cultural diversity – aren’t we supposed to be multicultural-but without room for our own people, is that it? ‘To hell or Connaught’ for Irish speakers?
All the hatred and oppression of centuries has failed to kill the language and the Gaelscoileanna are growing (50,000 children in immersion education on the island), as are total numbers of speakers (1.77million census 2011). Táim ag foghlaim freisin. Níl an Ghaeilge ag imeacht fós.
Sorry if my use of Irish is offensive – the argument goes like this usually – Irish speakers shouldn’t use their language publicly because many can’t understand it. Then Irish speakers accommodate others by using English and are told – well, now you speak English there’s no need for Irish. Inverted racism. Surely we can accommodate indigenous culture within our mainstream or are we just racist bigots?
People have made the point that these documents are being translated when nobody will read them. What percentage of all EU documents do you think is read? I imagine it’s very low. They’re documents written for legal purposes. Do you think the average French, German or Belgian citizen trawls through these documents at their leisure?
David Giles makes the point above that we’d be better off investing the €12 in “useful languages spoken by hundreds of millions of people in emerging and important markets such as Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese and Russian” but I doubt very much that the Irish government can not bother with the Irish language and simply settle for the cash! That €12 is a drop in the ocean regarding the financial yield of the EU so the whole point of this argument is missed. If there was no Irish language there’s no reason for the EU to fork out for it.
Our language is our heritage, our identity and OURS so why would anyone want to not support it to the hilt. If you had a crap teacher in school or you hated the curriculum or you’ve no affinity for the language, appreciate that there are more and more people who are embracing it in their daily lives and couldn’t imagine life without the Irish language.
Well said!
When someone ever mentions the word quango, the Irish language immediately springs to mind
We all understand here that the money comes from the Europe pot and not the Irish pot, right?
It’s €12,000,000 paid for by the 739,200,000 people in the EU rather than the 4,000,000 in Ireland.
That’s €0.02 a person.
We also understand that the ‘Who reads the Irish version?” argument is nullified by the equally valid ‘Who reads the English/French/Latvian/Russian/German version?”.
The only waste here is that these things are published on paper. Every official language of the EU should have their version but available as a PDF in this day and age. Let the few people who read any version of it pay their own printing.
Irish speakers should have equal rights – or should we just ignore the rights of all minorities? Should everyone have to be Catholic just because the majority are Catholic?
Irish speakers pay their taxes too and for all the services through English. There is potential for jobs in this as the article suggests. What monoglot anglophile supremacists fail to see is that because of the failure of the state to provide services like this to Irish speakers, pressure has come on Irish speakers to become exclusively anglophone. If the services are provided it creates jobs, strengthens the language and creates rich cultural diversity – aren’t we supposed to be multicultural-but without room for our own people, is that it? ‘To hell or Connaught’ for Irish speakers?
All the hatred and oppression of centuries has failed to kill the language and the Gaelscoileanna are growing (50,000 children in immersion education on the island), as are total numbers of speakers (1.77million census 2011). Táim ag foghlaim freisin. Níl an Ghaeilge ag imeacht fós.
Sorry if my use of Irish is offensive – the argument goes like this usually – Irish speakers shouldn’t use their language publicly because many can’t understand it. Then Irish speakers accommodate others by using English and are told – well, now you speak English there’s no need for Irish. Inverted racism. Surely we can accommodate indigenous culture within our mainstream or are we just racist bigots?
I would prefer to see 12 million burned than spent in that crap. Fire them all immediately
I’m a translator living in Italy. Though my language pair is exclusively Italian to English, I am constantly bombarded with job offers for English to Irish translation work mainly coming from agencies based in developing countries. The rates they offer are a pittance. So the money spent on translating English EU documents into Irish doesn’t even filter down to the ones actually doing the work. It’s pocketed by agencies that outsource the job to other foreign agencies in countries where labour is cheaper (which then have to find translators back in the EU, for a fraction of the price).
Ta or is it Shea Can’t do the fada,s
AltGr and you’re chosen vowel :)
Total waste of money. I have spent days laying out irish versions of annual reports for government departments. These things literally sit on shelves. No one reads them. Who would prefer to comprehend financial statements in Irish when they are already available in English? The cost to the government for translation and paying people like me to design twice must be pretty high.
Then maybe they should just do them in Irish then? That way, if people wanna know what they’re on about, they’ll learn Gaeilge. Why should us I=Irish Speakers be forced to read something in English ” just to save a few € here and there “?
Ta. Yip
“…a serious “lack of legal translators”…” – surely he meant “speakers” ?
This is insane.
Im a recent Law & Irish graduate, graduated with no prospect of a job and so am studying a masters abroad.I have no idea where these resources are going, I say that as someone who did my placement with the group responsible for researching legal terminology, EU legislation (as well as working on focal.ie, ainm.ie and log ainm.ie) and that amazing small group of people certainly aren’t seeing all of this money. In no way ever during my four years were we ever informed about “Interactive Terminology for Europe’ or the ‘Advanced Irish Skills Initiative’.
If you look on the epso website, responsible for hiring lawyers, linguists, specialists etc in both the European Parlaimant and Court there has been ONE Irish language job opening since July. I just don’t understand all this. The derogation exists because of a multitude of factors, just from what i believed, is based on the backlog of translating to do, the fact that Irish is an old language and new legal terminology simply doesn’t exist for many terms and phrases, and to take a shortcut in a translation could have huge effects in loopholes or lead to injustice, the training of translators and the resources of the government, which I was always under the illusion simply didnt exist- but apparently 12 MILLION has been spent on? I’m just really confused.
Surely the logical thing to do would be to approach, say, the class in UCC of max 11 students a year or any irish language arts class and incorporate an official translations module into the course in substitute of 17th century poetry? This would save money, spread awareness of the necessity of translators and lay the foundations for a skill set, which would naturally improve in a working environment as well?
I would only love a job as a lawyer linguist, and anyway experience or knowledge that I have got about this position has been a personal effort, not aided by any government Monopoly money. This just really confuses me!!
just briefly on the language debate…look, Irish will always be spoken by those who want to speak it. Don’t you think it’s more frustrating for students thinking its important, studying it in college, then having older people give out about how it is redundant and useless, maybe just due to lack of opportunity to learn properly or even appreciate even the -novelty- aspect of it? It creates jobs; in gales coils, publishers, not just the money grabbing translators that the government are hiding in some black hole. Every Irish person is happy to take credit for poets and playwrights who wrote in Irish, then chastise anyone who says we need it to establish ourselves on par with other European countries that have their own national languages recognised. Rant over!
Complete and utter waste of money. As usual ,simply paying lip service to the revival of the Irish language. The €12million per annum would be far better spent on updating the Irish curriculum as taught in our schools. As highlighted in the article by Michael Lewis, when Irish eyes are crying; Irish politicians on the whole openly admit they simply have enough Irish to get by. This of course highlights the green elephant in the room ,and indeed begs the question ,for whom are these translation of complex euro documents etc intended ?Evidently not the average politician.
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