Microsoft Translator adds Irish as a new language.

Our ongoing mission to break down language barriers continues with Irish: Today, we have added Irish Gaelic to Microsoft Translator. Irish Gaelic, usually referred to as the Irish Language or just Irish, and commonly known in Irish itself as Gaeilge (pronounced “gwael-guh”), is the latest addition to the Microsoft Translator family of languages. This brings Irish to all scenarios powered by Microsoft Translator, including Custom Translator, which helps customers to build translation systems for domain-specific terminology and style.

Neural machine translation technology has recently achieved impressive quality gains, characterized by highly fluent and accurate output, even for low-resourced languages such as Gaeilge. Using deep learning, we have iteratively refined our machine translation models. With today’s release, our commitment to deliver high-quality machine translation for Gaeilge moves to the next stage, as we prepare to continuously improve translation quality based on feedback from our users.

The Irish Language 

Irish is an official language of the country of Ireland, and also has official status in the European Union. It is classified as a Celtic language, a family of languages that includes Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Breton, Manx, and Cornish, first appearing over 2,500 years ago. Irish is spoken as a first language in a number of regions of Ireland and taught in all schools across the country.

Professor Andy Way, head of the MT-team at the ADAPT Research Centre Ireland, shared his support by stating” We are very pleased to hear of the launch of Microsoft’s new neural MT system for Irish.” His colleague, Dr. Teresa Lynn, Research Fellow specializing in Irish language technology at ADAPT, added “Microsoft’s launch of their Irish-language NMT system is wholly complementary to the work we have been doing in the ADAPT over the past few years towards improving Irish machine translation in public administration. With this new release, the wider Irish language community now have the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of advanced language technology.” Likewise, Cllr. Peter Kavanagh, Green Party Irish Language Spokesperson and Co-founder of Pop Up Gaeltacht, said “It’s very positive to see Microsoft launching an Irish language machine translation engine.”

Irish Gaelige is available now, or in the next few days, on all Microsoft Translator apps, add-ins, Office, Translator for Bing, and through the Azure Cognitive Services Translator API for businesses and developers.

What you can do with Microsoft Translator

Translate real-time conversations, menus and street signs, websites, documents, and more using the Translator app for Windows, iOS, Android and the web. Use the Microsoft Translator Text and Speech API, both members of the Azure Cognitive Services family, to help globalize your business and customer interactions. Create a more inclusive classroom for both students and parents with live captioning and cross-language understanding.

For more information on Microsoft Translator please visit: https://www.microsoft.com/translator/.

 

Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir!