CNGL teach Japanese to CTYI students
10 July 2009

The Centre for Next Generation Localisation (CGNL) has been working together with the Irish Centre Talented Youth (CTYI) to offer two classes to 8-13 year olds; ‘Japanese Language’ and ‘Culturally Localising Web Pages’.

The Culturally Localising Web Pages course is designed to introduce the concept of localisation to 8-13 year olds by comparing fun Japanese, English and French web sites. This course highlights the differences and similarities of contents among those languages and cultures to explain the importance of localisation. The students learned the Katakana character set in Japanese and how to type it when they create their own website.

Cara Greene, Education and Outreach Manager said “CNGL are delighted to be running this course with CTYI. The students are immersing themselves in Japanese language and culture and learning about how localisation is relevant to them. The students are challenging themselves with this new subject and seem to be really enjoying the experience.”

Joss Moorkens, a CNGL PhD student based in DCU, taught the language module. Dr. Dimitra Anastasiou, a CNGL postdoctoral researcher at the University of Limerick (UL), and Naoto Nishio, a CNGL PhD student at UL, taught the culturally localising web pages.

The centre’s academic partners include University College Dublin, the University of Limerick, and Trinity College Dublin in addition to DCU where the Centre is based. The industry partners involved include IBM, Microsoft, Symantec, Dai Nippon Printing and SDL and Irish firms Alchemy, VistaTec, SpeechStorm and Traslán