The cupla focal

Taking a trip? Then it's worth learning the local lingo, upla focail", according to Michael Cronin, author of Across the Lines: Travel, Language, Translation, which was launched during the week at a select reception in The Writers' Centre on Parnell Square. "It will help to preserve the languages around the planet," he says. Listening in are his Paris-born wife, Juliette Pechenart and their son Mairtin Cronin (9). Novelist and lecturer Alan Titley has come to launch the book. Afterwards, chatting to Prof Farrel Corcoran, he mentions his A Pocket History of Gaelic Culture, which is coming out this week. Is there any steam in it, we wonder? "Steam? Well, it tells what really happened between Aoife and Strongbow," he says. Short-story writer Evelyn Conlon, from Rockcorry in Co Monaghan, has her own book of short stories coming out in May, to be called Telling.