Twitter to be translated into Irish by the general public

One of the largest social medias in the world, Twitter, has opened its doors to the Irish language. 

The Twitter Translation Center is a hub for translators and language entusiasts who want to see the network in their language. In a recent blog post in the Translation Center the Twitter team announced that 16 new languages would be included in the centre, and one of them is Irish.

These languages are part of our new system, where the community controls the translations 100%. Translations are automatically approved using an algorithm that takes into account the community votes.

- Twitter Translation Center Blog

The initiative was launched in 2011. Until then, the platform was only available in English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish. Now, thanks to the translation centre, it's now available in five more languages.

Speaking to WorldIrish, Maitiú Cummins, a college student studying Irish and who has a great interest in translation said that it was great news to hear that Irish was to included. 'Anytime that a large company recognises the language is a boost for it' he said, but admitted that there was a certain risk involved with leaving it open to the public.

It is a risk and Facebook has shown up some crackers but these things have a way of working themselves out. It's based on votes and stuff so people will eventually weed out the dodgy translations but I think it's probably the best way to do it. 

There are nice ways of saying things in Irish that could be lost if translated by people who don't have a stór focal leathan [broad vocabulary] like "I mbéal an phobail" is a real Gaelaí way of saying "trending" but "Ag treochtáil" is based on "treocht" and takes the English nós [way] of throwing 'ing' onto the end of a noun - which doesn't always sound nice in Irish.

What do you think? Will you be logging into the translation centre to submit your suggestions?