FIONTAR collaborates with University of Wales at Lampeter in new INTERREG programme:
High quality digital materials to be made available to communities in West Wales and Ireland
11 February 2005

Dublin City University's Fiontar and the University of Wales at Lampeter have just been awarded over €1.6 million under the EU INTERREG IIIA funding programme. The funding is for a partner project which will merge modern language expertise from both third level institutions. The principal outcome of the project will be an integrated database of Irish-language terminology which will be made available free of charge through the internet, at home, at school and in the workplace.

It addresses in particular the needs of business and communications enterprises, the education sector, the translation industry and other specialist users. This project includes a training element in the use of electronic resources for Irish.

FIONTAR (ENTERPRISE) was established in Dublin City University in 1993 to provide enterprise education through the medium of the Irish language. FIONTAR delivers a degree programme and two postgraduate programmes. INTERREG enabled the establishment of both postgraduate programmes in collaboration with partners in Wales. This is our third initiative supported by INTERREG. FTU is funded under Priority One, Measure Four: Communications and Transport Technology.

vAccording to Dr Caoilfhionn Nic Pháidín, Director of FIONTAR, "Terminology has always been an integral and distinctive strand of our work in FIONTAR, originally servicing our own teaching needs and more latterly expanded for the general public. Under the FTU project, FIONTAR is creating a public resource in close collaboration with the Terminology Committee, Foras na Gaeilge. This is the official authority in Ireland for term-creation and ratification, which is also part-funding the project. The establishment and launch of the database will be completed by 2007 and Foras na Gaeilge will administer, maintain and develop it from that time. There has been continuous work at State level on Irish-language terminology since 1927. Development of this service was specifically included in the British-Irish Agreement of 1999. There are over 200,000 terms available in various forms for input into the FTU database".

In the year 2000, FIONTAR published Míle Téarma Ríomhaireachta, a dictionary of one thousand Computing terms. 5,000 copies were distributed by the Department of Education to schools throughout the country. Foclóir FIONTAR, a bilingual dictionary of over 10,000 terms in the disciplines of finance, computing and enterprise was published in 2004. An expanded Terminology CD-ROM of nine dictionaries is available also through a joint project between Foras na Gaeilge and FIONTAR.

The Official Languages Act was signed into Irish law in July 2003. The Act is the first piece of legislation to provide a statutory framework for the delivery of services through the Irish Language, and owes much to your own statutory model here in Wales. The Act has further increased the demand for terminology in Irish which services in particular the Irish language media, technological services and Irish-medium educational provision at all levels.

INTERREG IIIA is a Community initiative which encourages the economic, social and technological development of cross-border areas. The Welsh and Irish Governments already support the independent development of our languages in different ways, but INTERREG makes possible the additional level of shared expertise.