Sir, – In response to Pól Ó Corragáin (December 10th) and his request for Google to provide products and services in Irish, it should also be pointed out there is a healthy selection of software translated or localised into the Irish language, available from nascanna.com.
Thanks to interest in the Irish language from commercial localisation operations such as Microsoft and vibrant open source and crowd sourced efforts such as those from the Mozilla Foundation and Facebook, Irish language software users already have much to choose from.
In fairness to Google, the Google Translate service already supports Irish translation.
Two decades ago some engineering colleagues of mine translated their own version of a well-know operating system of the day into Irish. The Help menu was translated as “A Mhamaí”. Thankfully, we have come a long way in terms of quality and commitment to Irish language ICT products and services since those days. – Yours, etc,