Two Mayo students, Sofia Ferdini and Ruth O’Connor of Mount St Michael, have taken part in the All Ireland Linguistics Olympiad finals, the search to find Ireland’s top young decoders at Dublin City University. The best performers at the national finals in DCU will be selected to represent Ireland at the International Linguistics Olympiad in Manchester in July 2013.
The Olympiad, run by the Science Foundation Ireland-funded Centre for Next Generation Localisation (CNGL ), challenges secondary school students to apply logic and reasoning skills to solve complex language puzzles in unfamiliar languages. The contest aims to inspire the next generation of multilingual technology graduates, who possess a powerful blend of language competency and problem-solving expertise.
At the finals of this year’s competition, the country’s top 100 decipherers tackled a series of brain teasing challenges in little known or endangered languages. The problems covered everything from interpreting Armenian railway maps, to translating sentences into the fictional Yoda Speak language made famous in the Star Wars movies. There is little point in the students swotting up on their languages before the competition, however, as problems could cover any of the world’s more than 7,000 languages. Instead, key requirements are patience, logic, and the willingness to think around corners.
