Irish language lost in translation

I WELCOME the Government’s new strategy to increase the number of people who use the Irish language in their daily lives (Irish Examiner, December 22).

The concept of Irish being the first language of the state is more consistent with de Valera’s perspective than with reality. In the 2006 census, 41% of the population had some knowledge of the language.

Translating every official document into Irish is as useful an exercise as translating the complete works of Shakespeare into academic Irish in iambic pentameter. It would take an eternity and it would be the worst hell imaginable. It would be as useless as translating the 12 books of Virgil’s Aeneid into Irish in dactylic hexameter.