It is bound to be asked. Dè a' Ghàidhlig a th'air Firefox? If you thought that George W Bush was an eejit for saying that 'the problem with the French is that they have no word for entrepreneur' then welcome to the world of the Gael. A mole deep inside Edinburgh's cooncil has catalogued some of the comments from the great monolingual fungus that is your average modern day Brit*. One claimed that Gaelic wasn't fit for the modern age because it had no 'word' for chilli con carne. Another whinged about why the publicity for the Cèilidh Culture festival should be bilingual. 'Don't the Gaels have their own word for cèilidh?' moaned Dùn Eideann cooncil's very ane Dubya.
Anyway, as I tuck into my veggie version of tiolaidh le feoil, I almost choke on my oxymoron to find out that someone has translated Mozilla's Firefox into Gàidhlig. But, before a lynch mob of Tax Payers' Alliance and Daily Mail extremists form an orderly queue outside Salmond's office, it should be pointed out that this appears to be the work of a dedicated volunteer techno-Gael. Good on him. With Google having adopted the ancient Scots' tongue some years ago, it means that Scots can now browse and surf almost entirely in the language that came here with the er... Scots nearly 2000 years ago.
 |
| Dè a' Ghàidhlig a th'air hairy skat loving nuns? |
Even if only a few hundred bilingual diversity loving zealots like myself use it, it'll still be a step forward for Scotland and her culture. Why? Because there is no fckn value in just being like everyone else. I'm actually quite proud of Scottish Gaelic's contribution to the patchwork of global diversity. It makes the world a more interesting place. Any goddamn dork can just parrot American English.
In reference to the previous posting on Scotland's poverty of ambition, this has to be one instance where someone has got off their arse and done something. Something different, other than shopping at Primark or updating MyScab with inane bullshit. Agus, se siud fàth mo sgeoil.
Download it here.
* I refuse to acknowledge a 'Scot' who decries his/ her nation's oldest indigenous tongue. To me, they might as well be Gerri Halliwell in her Butcher's Apron. Or David Cameron. Whichever is worse.
8 comments:
Just in case you don't know, the "techno-Gael" behind the Gaelic Fx is the same guy that's behind this page or behind the online version of Dwelly's dictionary (which he also later fully merged into Am Faclair Beag). Laoch gun teagamh!
Bha amharas agam gum b'e...! Thought so. Obair ionmholta bho ghaisgeach na Gàidhlig.
Dwellys online is a gem. Will have to add it to my lists. A chuid de thax-payers' money dha, mura thuit cuid na rathad mar-tha!
Mìle taing, tha sibh ro choibhneil :)
Chan eil mi faighinn dad a dh'airgead on riaghaltas no na buidhnean Gàidhlig (ach a-mhàin na tha sinn a' faighinn de thabhartasan airson an Fhaclair Bhig). Saoirse, a bhalacha, saoirse ;)
Good on ya Akerbeltz. I bet there's lot of other different software out there that's been localised into Gaelic, just that people don't realise it.
In Welsh, most are listed on www.meddal.com
I'm currently localising an on-line Twitter client www.splitweet.com - it's built by some friendly Catalan guys and it's very painless to localise.
There's this annoying tit at my wife's place of work that keps harpng on about why Welsh doesn't have it's own word for ambulance, not realising the English word is derived from French.
Compare the waste of money (250K) that went into the Bord's Mygaelic.com then it makes you wonder if they have any idea at all of what is going on outside comfortable quango land.
Nice site, meddal. I'm planning to do a page like that too but the order of service goes something like that: my 9-months-pregnant-book on Gaelic pronunciation >> some other software tool including a spellchecker >> a bit of xmas cheer >> redo Akerbeltz (which will involve loosing some pages that are pretty obsolete such as the Duilleagan Buidhe and replacing them with something like Bathar, listing all the tool available in Gaelic. Some are too well hidden.
I recently saw a menu in Glasgow sporting "chicken con carne!"
A Mhgr Akerbeltz,
Aon uair 's g' eil an leabhar foillsichte, ceannaichidh mi fhìn is a h-uile Gàidheal air a bheil mi eòlach e!
There's also a Gaelic OpenOffice (like Word and Database &c.), which can be downloaded here:
http://gd.openoffice.org/
What we need now is:
Facebook Gàidhlig...cuin a thig e?
(Chan eil mi faighneachd do akerbeltz bochd a-mhàin!)
Post a Comment