Welsh civil servants and teachers spend greater than a day making an attempt to translate eight English phrases

Welsh civil servants have been working with academics including taking part in an ‘away day’ just to translate eight English words.

A four-part initiative was carried out to come up with Welsh equivalents for eight descriptions of ‘soundscapes’, or noise affecting planning applications.

Yet despite discussions which ultimately involved 43 officials and eight academics, they only managed to come up with four unanimous agreements.

Critics have poured scorn on the process aimed at providing Welsh equivalents for the terms ‘pleasant’, ‘calm’, ‘uneventful’, ‘monotonous’, ‘annoying’, ‘chaotic’, ‘eventful’ and ‘vibrant’. 

Welsh is spoken by 17.8 per cent of the country’s population – an estimated 538,000 people, the lowest on record, according to the most recent census in 2021.

An official report accompanying this translation programme also noted that ‘all Welsh speakers are by now naturally bilingual’.

The research was for the Soundscape Attributes Translations Project, said to ‘provide translations for these attributes to facilitate data collection in places where English is not the primary or only language’ and headed by University College London.

Some 10 Welsh Government translators initially came up with a first draft, followed up by a two-hour workshop attended by 13 civil servants.

Welsh Government officials have been taking part in a research scheme aimed at translating eight English words, in what critics have called a ‘waste’ – pictured is the Senedd in Cardiff

Their findings were then sent for review by five researchers from UCL, who were taking part in the Research England-backed programme.

And finally there was a what was described by researchers as ‘a Translation Service away day’ at government offices at Cathays Park in Cardiff, featuring 30 Welsh Government translators as well as three Welsh language scholars from Cardiff University and the standard Welsh dictionary Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru.

‘Soundscapes’ have formed a key element of the Welsh Government’s approach to planning since 2015 legislation aimed at improving ‘social, economic, environmental and cultural well-being’. 

But the most recent efforts only came up with agreed single-word Welsh translations for four of the terms.

‘Llonydd’ was chosen for ‘calm’, ‘undonog’ for ‘monotonous’, ‘caotig’ for ‘chaotic’ and ‘bywiog’ for ‘vibrant’.

Yet even here there were misgivings expressed by some taking part, with ‘caotig’ described as an example of an English loan word or ‘Wenglish’. 

Another example of this was ‘niwsans’, one of two suggested translations for ‘annoying’ – the other being ‘amhleserus’.

Other cases involving two potential alternatives rather than one were ‘dymunol’ and ‘pleserus’ for ‘pleasant’, ‘digynnwrf’ and ‘diddigwydd’ for ‘uneventful’ and ‘cynhyrfus’ ‘llawn digwydd’ for ‘eventful’.

John O’Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance campaign group, said: ‘If you sat down to write a sketch on government waste, this real life episode might be deemed too unrealistic.’

Andrew RT Davies, a Conservative member of the Senedd for South Wales Central and the party’s former leader in Wales, said it was ‘ludicrous’ to put such efforts ‘towards translating eight words’.

It is not known how much the work cost, but the Welsh Government said it did not provide the funding.

A spokesperson said the 43 employees taking part did so ‘most through informal, brief discussions in short meetings’ or via Teams. 

Andrew RT Davies, a Conservative member of the Senedd and the party’s former leader in Wales, said it was ‘ludicrous’ to put such efforts ‘towards translating eight words’ 

They added: ‘We did not fund this research. A small number of staff voluntarily contributed their expertise to an international multilingual research project as part of their usual work.’

The Government said the project discussed as one item during a routine training day for Translation Service staff in a Welsh Government office and staff did not visit the UCL campus in London.

Writing in the journal Applied Acoustics, the team behind the project said: ‘This article represents a groundbreaking achievement for sound studies in Wales.

‘This is the first time that experts in acoustics and the Welsh Language have collaborated, coming together to translate an annex to an international standard.’