An Gaodhal Irish-English Bilingual Model

This bilingual multi-script text recognition model was derived from the complete set of the late nineteenth-century newspaper An Gaodhal, a bilingual (Irish and English) publication produced in Brooklyn by Irish emigrant Micheál Ó Lócháin (Michael J. Logan). It was developed in the course of the project "Building a Digitally Enhanced Edition of the Brooklyn-Published Irish-Language Newspaper An Gaodhal, 1881-1904," a collaborative initiative between New York University and the University of Galway. The Irish-language text in this newspaper is almost exclusively set in cló Gaelach, a non-roman script commonly used at the time. All pages used for the model were corrected by a specialist in the historical forms of the language, and the digital images were provided through the digital library holdings of the James Hardiman Library at the University of Galway. The model preserves key features of the cló Gaelach form: notably, it deploys unicode characters that preserve the punctum used to designate lenition of consonants present in the original text. The project was conducted with funding support from the Robert D. L. Gardiner Foundation, the Irish Institute of New York, Glucksman Ireland House, New York University, University of Galway, Foras na Gaeilge, and the Department of Rural and Community Development and the Gaeltacht of the Government of Ireland.