Colm O'Regan: Sometimes things are found in translation 

President Catherine Connolly on a visit to Gaelscoil Inse Chór in Dublin. Picture: Marc O'Sullivan

The presidential election seems like a year ago now. The foreign media have gone home.

Dire warnings on social media about a left-wing president seem funny. You’d think President Connolly’s first task was going to be to appear on a national address in military fatigues and big sunglasses and declare martial law. Instead she went to a Gaelscoil. The President said she was going to make Irish the presidency’s primary working language.

Based on some of the hysteria around her during the campaign, Irish language camps for compulsory re-education with hours of conjugation and tearful public confessions of An Tuiseal Ginideach failings. (So far that has not happened... although it wouldn’t be any harm if it did. We’ve gone fierce soft in the schools altogether.)

But one change is that all our presidential social media is now in Irish and English. This might seem like a tiny thing but now I wait for these bulletins. Whereas before, no offence to the man, I never read Michael D Higgins’s comings and goings. Now the office of the president delivers my unexpected, every-so-often Irish lesson.

I am probably not going to learn how to hurl abuse at a player who is not tracking back fast enough or someone who won’t indicate on a roundabout. 

Instead it’s the Irish for words like “the President welcomed” (Chuir an tUachtarán Connolly fáilte roimh), presented (bhronn an tUachtarán Connolly), attended (D’fhreastail an tUachtarán Connolly), on a courtesy call (ar ghlao chúirtéise) I’ll be dropping “Tar éis di a machnamh a dhéanamh ar an mBille Fostaíochta (Aoiseanna Scoir Conarthacha),” into polite chat. (“Having considered the Employment (Contractual Retirement Ages) Bill.”).

As she does a number of jobs repeatedly, that repetition cements new words and smidges of grammar.

And one more request for nerds like me — if each presidential update had a link to a site, explaining why words and sentences are constructed that way, I’d gobble that up too.

And I know it should be blindingly obvious already but still, these short bursts of Irish are a manageable amount to see the differences between English and Irish. It’s the sweet spot between Glan Suas é / Bin the Poo and ‘If you want to read these instructions in Irish version it’s upside down at the back’.

President Catherine Connolly with Colm Ó Nualláin, principal at Gaelscoil Inse Chór at a visit  last month to Gaelscoil Inse Chór in Dublin. Picture: Marc O'Sullivan

Translating into Irish is a bit like the old joke about a tourist in Ireland asking a local for directions and getting the reply: “Well I wouldn’t start from here”. It’s a reminder that what you get from an online translator can sometimes be bollocks (cacamas) And it reinforces for me that every bit of bilingualism is welcome. You learn the bit of Irish and you understand that language is not just words. It’s a way of expressing.

You miss the translation when it’s not there. You’re sort of excluded. I did an event a few years ago where one panel discussion was 100% in beautiful native spoken Irish.

But 90% of the room hadn’t a clue what was going on. And felt bad about it and left out. Wouldn’t it be great if those 300 people all learned one new word each?

My youngest is absolutely BET INTO Song of the Sea on TG4’s player. She watches it repeatedly. I don’t blame her. It’s beautiful. I can’t be the only one for whom it opened the tear ducts for previous bereavements. 

She doesn’t have many Irish words yet so in a sense she is following the story as a work of art. But are no subtitles so she’s struggling mightily to pick up bits only a word at a time. If she had the subtitles — HINT HINT TG4 — she might pick up a few more.

Sometimes things are found in translation.