Weather Reports on Mobile Phones - in Latin

Cumulus, stratus and cirrus clouds are well known among all the weather freaks. The Latin names for the clouds have already been used more than two hundred years. Foreca – a Finnish weather service company has taken weather services back to its roots. Foreca’s mobile weather service foreca.mobi (it works on web browsers as well) is now available also in Latin (click on settings, then select Lingua Latina).

Jokke Häsä, Master of Science at Helsinki University, translated foreca.mobi weather services in Latin. “Weather related words can be found in dictionaries quite easily although some special words like different terms related to snow were more difficult. These terms I had to create myself by benchmarking other languages. The technical terms related to the use of the service were more complicated because they were totally new words and sometimes the meaning of the original term was not so clear”, commented Jokke Häsä on Latin translations.

Jokke Häsä is also involved in Finnish Broadcasting Company’s team called Nuntii latini, News in Latin. “I am not writing news frequently since I am more involved in correspondence. In both cases there is a bigger freedom in translating and writing than in this new task. You only need to write something in good language. The greatest challenge in foreca.mobi Latin translations was to translate individual words, so that terms could be understood out of context.”

In foreca.mobi, there is weather information for more than 80.000 locations around the world. Service includes current conditions as well as weather forecasts up to seven days. Service also contains animated maps, for instance satellite data covering the whole world and rain radar images for selected territories.

At the moment, foreca.mobi is available in 15 languages.

On the web: foreca.mobi

Posted to the site on 10th April 2008

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