A REFERENCE guide to the local language is essential on any trip abroad, but what if your trip is to outer space? A new book gives all of the English-Irish translations essential to discuss space exploration in the first official language.
An English-Irish Lexicon of Scientific and Technical Space-Related Terminologygives Irish translations for more than 3,500 terms related to space science.
The work was initiated by Prof Susan McKenna-Lawlor of Space Technology Ireland. Co-author Damien Ó Muirí is an expert in modern Irish and an accredited translator.
The work forms part of an ongoing initiative by the International Academy of Astronautics to produce a multilingual space dictionary. The first dictionary of this kind was published in 1970 and included translations in seven languages, says the new book.
The academy handles 20 languages including Arabic, Bulgarian, Hungarian and Romanian. “It seemed to me important that Irish would be included among these languages, so that scientists and engineers can, in the present day, express contemporary issues in astronautics in the national language,” said Prof McKenna-Lawlor. “This ancient language is sufficiently rich to be able to rapidly evolve to encompass scientific and technical concepts at the cutting edge of developments in space exploration.”
Words chosen for the book include the obvious, such as black hole (poll dubh or dúpholl) and asteroid (astaróideach, mionphláinéad or even pláinéadóideach). There are also some you may not have anticipated, such as glovebox (lámhainnbhosca). Most of us take a glovebox to be a storage compartment in a car; to an astronaut it is a sealed container with built-in gloves used to perform experiments.
The academy keeps track of the new terms coined for scientific ideas and equipment, the book explains. These definitions have to be clear since some of the words in common usage may mean something different. The new terms must also be linked to their equivalents in each of the other languages.
In the introduction, the authors describe some of the difficulties encountered during the English-Irish translation. The Irish word “ga, is used for both ray and radius . . . which could be confusing in space terminology, where both light and mathematics are important fields”.
In space parlance the English term dog-leg refers to a specific manoeuvre made during a rocket launch. This term has been translated using the literal Irish equivalent (ionramháil cos con) and by the scientific meaning (ionramháil threoraithe chumachtaithe).