European Language Equality Report on the Welsh Language

Research output: Book/ReportCommissioned reportpeer-review

This study is part of a series that reports on the results of an investigation of the level of sup- port European languages receive through technology, with a focus on the Welsh language. A thorough description of the Welsh language in the digital age is provided. This includes an overview of the status of Welsh and English in Wales. The use of Welsh in education and the efforts made to standardise technical terminology for the Welsh education system, along with a summary of the Welsh writing system and the typology of Welsh, a member of the Brythonic Celtic group, are presented. The use of Welsh online, along with Welsh people’s level of access to technology is covered. The scope of this report in respect of Language Tech- nology (LT) is then laid out, and a general definition of LT provided. The LT support avail- able to the Welsh language is discussed. This discussion includes the availability of corpora and the suitability of these corpora for reuse in respect of licencing and IP issues, together with recent improvements. The digitisation of Welsh dictionaries along with the availabil- ity of other resources such as spellcheckers, grammar checkers and specialised lexica are discussed, and recent developments in respect of creation of acoustic and language models for Welsh are outlined. The many and varied tools available to the Welsh language are then introduced, resources such as NLP tools, virtual personal assistants, chatbots, speech tech- nology, and translation technology. Some of these tools have been developed specifically for Welsh, while others are part of international frameworks. Key projects, initiatives and stakeholders are then identified. Responsibility for LT and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the service of the Welsh language resides with the Welsh Government, however the relevance of the development of the UK’s National AI Strategy is also considered. The importance of LT’s place in Wales in respect of language revitalisation and economic regeneration is underlined, along with the key strategies related to these areas. Much effort has been put into developing infrastructure relating to the Welsh language in recent years and this infrastructure is con- stantly growing. The significance of the Welsh Government’s Welsh Language Technology Action Plan together with further actions which followed in the wake of this plan are un- derlined. While the UK LT industry is mostly focused on the needs of the English language, Welsh language LT provision is mainly driven forward by the higher education sector. Wales does have vibrant creative technology, media and translation sectors which make use of the government funded opensource resources created by universities. Welsh language LT pro- vision is compared to other European languages, based on an empirical investigation of the resources available in the European Language Grid catalogue. In conclusion we find that Welsh LT has made considerable progress in the digital sphere in the last few years, how- ever further development and investment is needed. Gaps in provision are identified, such as bilingual models needed for bilingual language communities, and suggestions made illus- trating how new Welsh language tools and resources can fill those gaps. Finally, the need for continuing development and investment is emphasised, so that minoritised languages such as Welsh do not fall behind as new digital services and products come to market.
Original languageEnglish
PublisherEuropean Language Equality (ELE)
Number of pages23
Publication statusPublished - 28 Feb 2022
View graph of relations