Téarma.ie — The National Terminology Database for Irish
There was plenty of food for thought at the discussion surrounding the Dictionary Symposium at Oireachtas na Samhna in Killarney at the start of the month. The speakers referred to the state of the English-Irish dictionaries in the last twenty years, as it is now and as it will be in the future. They all agreed that a text should be readable and understandable. This is imperative to prevent readers from disregarding the Irish version and relying too heavily on the English version of a text. They also advised to use Irish idiomatic expressions and not be over influenced by English when writing in Irish.
Translation providers such as Dréimire – Language Services use many kinds of online resources and dictionaries in order to provide accurate translations from English to Irish. One of the most highly recognised and widely used resources is the National Terminology Database for Irish, accessible at téarma.ie. The research groups Gaois, Fiontar & Scoil na Gaeilge (DCU) manage the website in collaboration with the Terminology Committee, Coiste Téarmaíochta and Foras na Gaeilge.
The database is available free of charge, and has been adapted to work both on desktop computers and on mobile devices.
There are about 186,000 bilingual entries are available in the tearma.ie database. The terms can be handled in different ways and the content can also be downloaded in TBX or TXT format. The tearma.ie entries can be used with translation software using these files. If you are looking for a term that is not available in this database, you can ask the Terminology Committee, Foras na Gaeilge, by completing the enquiry form.
