THINGS I HAVE BUILT

• Global Glossary (globalglossary.org)
• Votomatic (votomatic.ie, votomatic.co.uk, volbomat.cz)
• National Terminology Database for Irish (focal.ie) — details »
  This is a large lexical database with around 150,000 terminological entries in English, Irish and several other languages. It is available to the public for free. This is one of the largest terminology databases in the world. ■ My job was to design the database structure, with a lot of inspiration from ISO's terminology stardards. I built the database from scratch and created a set of tools for importing pre-existing terminology lists into the database semi-automatically. I created an editorial interface to be used internally for managing the terminology collection in the database. I created the public website (available at www.focal.ie). The graphical layout is my work and so is the search algorithm which, in my opinion, is quite smart as it deals intelligently with morphological phenomena such as inflection and intial mutation, and can recognize spelling mistakes. ■ Tools used: SQL Server, ASP.NET, C#, XHTML, JavaScript. The database does not use XML internally but I have created tools for exporting to XML and TBX.
• Placenames Database of Ireland (logainm.ie) — details »
  This is a large, official database of placenames in Ireland, containing records on approximately 100,000 geographical units from counties through baronies and civil parishes to individual townlands and streets from all over Ireland. Many names are accompanied with pronunciation recordings. The primary purpose of the database is to provide information on the names of these places in both official languages (Irish and English) but it contains other data types as well, such as historical citations, hundreds of thousands of scanned index cards, geographical coordinates and data on administrative hierarchy (which townland is in which civil parish and so on). A public interface is available freely on the web to search for placenames in either language or by geographical location. An interactive map is embedded in the website to indicate the geographical location of places and to make it possible to users to "browse" the country. ■ Like focal.ie, my job was to design the database structure and to build the database from scratch, including an editorial interface and a public website, including the mapping features and the search algorithm. ■ Tools used: SQL Server, ASP.NET, C#, XHTML, JavaScript, Google Maps.
• Beo! (beo.ie) — details »
  Beo! (meaning 'alive' in Irish) is an Irish-language webzine. It has been a high-quality read since its creation in 2001. It functions as a monthly magazine, with each edition containing some 20 articles on general-interest topics. From a technology point of view, the website has several features I'm quite pround of. One of them is an Irish-English glossary feature which makes it possible for readers with weak Irish to hover the mouse over a word and see its translation pop up in a box. Another feature is an archive search engine which can search all the articles in a way that deals intelligently with linguistic phenomena such as inflection and initial mutation. ■ As usual, the website has a database at the back-end as well as an editorial interface (basically a home-grown content management system) and a public-facing interface. All of it is my work. I am also the proud creator of the magazine's logo. ■ Tools used: SQL Server, ASP.NET, C#, XHTML, JavaScript, Markdown.
• Pota Focal (potafocal.com) — details »
  Pota Focal (meaning 'pot of words' in Irish) is a collection of Irish-language dictionaries and glossaries. It contains an Irish-language thesaurus as well. I have compiled the website's content from several sources and I keep adding to it all the time. One of the sources included in Pota Focal is my own personal glossary which I have been collecting for many years. This website is a personal toy project of mine. ■ There is a database at the back-end as well as an editorial interface and the public-facing website. All that is my work. I have also created the logo. ■ Tools used: SQL Server, ASP.NET, C#, XHTML, JavaScript.
• Seanfhocla Chonnacht (book + CD-ROM) — details »
  Seanfhocla Chonnacht ('the proverbs of Connacht') is a revamped edition of a popular collection of proverbs in Irish. It was published by Cois Life in 2010 as a book and CD-ROM. The CD-ROM is my work. ■ The CD-ROM gives the reader an opportunity to browse the proverbs by many different criteria: by topic, for example Bás 'death', Mná 'women', Sláinte 'health'; by word, for example you can bring up a list of proverbs containing the word cloch 'stone' including all its inflected and mutated forms; and by source, so that you can get a list of proverbs collected in a given area, from a given person, from a given published work, and so on. Almost all the words in the actual text of the proverbs are clickable: when reading a proverb, you can click a word and get a list of other proverbs containing that word. ■ The proverbs were compiled in a Microsoft Access database. From that, I generated the CD-ROM's contents as a bunch of static HTML files. The CD-ROM works as an HTML Application on Windows and can be browsed as an ordinary website on other operating systems. ■ The book with the CD-ROM can be bought from Cois Life here »

THINGS I HAVE HELPED BUILD

I created the graphical layout for these websites.

• Ranganna.com — an Irish-language e-learning website
• Siopa.ie — an on-line shop for Irish language-related stuff
• ClubLeabhar.com — an on-line book club for Irish-language books
• Cois Life — a publishing company
• Scríobh.ie — IT advice for people writing in Irish
• Dúrud — a language technology company in Ireland
• mSemicon — an electronic equipment manufacturer

PUBLICATIONS AND TALKS

• How to build a termbase for 500,000 users (and live to tell the story) (with Brian Ó Raghallaigh) — talk at TKE (Terminology and Knowledge Engineering) Conference 2010, Dublin, Ireland (13 August 2010)
• When definitions are not enough — talk at TKE (Terminology and Knowledge Engineering) Conference 2010, Dublin, Ireland (12 August 2010) Published in: Ú. Bhreathnach, F. de Barra-Cusack (eds.) (2010) Terminology and Knowledge Engineering Conference 2010, Dublin: Fiontar, Dublin City University, pp. 81-92 Warning! The published version contains incorrectly formatted diagrams and may be misunderstood because of that. This online version is correct.
• The Focal.ie National Terminology Database for Irish (with Brian Ó Raghallaigh) — software demonstration at Euralex International Congress, Ljouwert/Leeuwarden, Friesland (8 July 2010) Published in: A. Dykstra, T. Schoonheim (eds.) (2010) Proceedings of the 14th Euralex International Congress, Ljouwert/Leeuwarden: Fryske Akademy, pp. 937-948
• What WordNet does not know about selectional preferences — talk at Euralex International Congress, Ljouwert/Leeuwarden, Friesland (8 July 2010) Published in: A. Dykstra, T. Schoonheim (eds.) (2010) Proceedings of the 14th Euralex International Congress, Ljouwert/Leeuwarden: Fryske Akademy, pp. 431-436
• 'Tabhair dom a bhfuil uaim': conas inneall cuardaigh a thógáil d'fhoclóir leictreonach ['Give me what I want': how to build a search engine for an electronic dictionary] — talk at Imbolc in Baile Bhúirne, Ireland (6 February 2010)
• User-Friendliness: the key to promoting a minority language on the Internet (with Brian Ó Raghallaigh) — talk at 12th International Conference on Minority Languages, Tartu, Estonia (28 May 2009)
• Selectional Preferences, Corpora and Ontologies — MPhil dissertation at Trinity College, University of Dublin (September 2008)
• Giving them what they want: search strategies for electronic dictionaries — talk at Euralex Internatioal Congress, Barcelona, Catalonia (July 2008) Published in: E. Bernal, J. DeCesaris (eds.) (2008) Proceedings of the 13th Euralex International Congress, Barcelona: Universitat Pompeu Fabra, pp. 1295-1299
• 'Cá bhfuil mo shínte fada?': ionchódú téacs ar ríomhairí ['Where are my accent marks?': text encoding on computers] — talk at Engineers Ireland (6 March 2008)
• Ionchódú Téacs ar Ríomhairí [Text Encoding on Computers] (August 2007) Published in: Comhar, Volume 67, Number 8, pp. 13-16
• Localization into Irish (October/November 2007) Published in: Multilingual Computing and Technology, Volume 18, Number 7, pp. 53-56
• Finding the right structure for lexicographical data: experiences from a terminology project — talk at Euralex International Congress, Turin, Italy (7 September 2006) Published in: E. Corino, C. Martello, C. Onesti (eds.) (2008) Proceedings of the 13th Euralex International Congress, Volume 1, Turin: Edizioni dell'Orso, pp. 189-198

AWARDS AND NOMINATIONS

• European Language Label Awarded to Logainm.ie (2010) · Awarded to Ranganna.com (2009) · Awarded to Focal.ie (2007) · Awarded to Beo! (2002)
• Barr-50 Gnó le Gaeilge [Top 50 in Business with Irish]: Nomination for Beo! (2010) · Nomination for myself (!) (2007)
• Irish Web Awards Awarded to Focal.ie in the category Best Irish-Language Website (2008)
• Comórtas Liteartha Oireachtas na Gaeilge [literary competition at Oireachtas na Gaeilge cultural festival], I won the third prize in the category Essay on an Engineering Theme with the essay Ionchódú Téacs ar Ríomhairí [Text Encoding on Computers] (2006)

EDUCATION AND QUALIFICATIONS

• Postgraduate Diploma in Applied Irish Dublin Institute of Technology (2010)
• MPhil in Speech and Language Processing Trinity College, University of Dublin (2008)
• BA Honours (2.1) The Open University (2005)

TRAINING COURSES

• Grammatical Framework Summer School Barcelona, Catalonia (August 2011)
• Geographical Information System Applications for the Arts and Humanities Queen's University, Belfast (September 2009)
• Lexicom: Workshop in Lexicography and Lexical Computing Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic (June 2007)
• International Terminology Summer School Cologne University of Applied Sciences, Cologne, Germany (July 2005)

CONTACT

E-mail: valselob@gmail.com. I am based in Dublin, Ireland.