Civil servants accused of ‘wasting taxpayers’ money’ on translating eight words into Welsh… and failing

According to a research paper published in Applied Acoustics, the translation effort was part of an environmental assessment examining how noise and soundscapes affect people’s wellbeing.

The project was linked to the devolved administration’s goals of boosting Welsh language use.

Despite the considerable human resources deployed, the team managed to reach agreement on just two of the eight terms, while resorting to “Wenglish” — a blend of Welsh and English — for others.

The translation effort proceeded through four distinct stages, beginning with 10 members of the Welsh Government Translation Service proposing initial Welsh alternatives for each adjective.

A subsequent workshop brought together 13 civil servants described as confident Welsh speakers to seek consensus on the most appropriate terms.

Five researchers from University College London then reviewed their conclusions before a final away day involving 30 government translators and three Welsh language scholars from Cardiff University and Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru, the Welsh dictionary.

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WELSH GOVERNMENT

After this extensive process, unanimity emerged for only two words: vibrant became “bywiog” and monotonous was rendered as “undonog”.

For “chaotic”, translators settled on “caotig” — an English loanword — despite workshop participants expressing reluctance to approve what they considered Wenglish for official terminology.

The word “annoying” posed similar difficulties, with staff ultimately selecting “niwsans”, essentially a Welsh-sounding version of “nuisance”.

Translators concluded that “eventful” and “uneventful” represented concepts that were “alien” to the Welsh language.

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John O’Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, condemned the exercise as evidence of civil servants “wasting their time and our money on translating pointless questionnaires” at a time when the country was “on its knees” economically.

“If you sat down to write a sketch on government waste, this real-life episode might be deemed too unrealistic,” he added, calling for cuts to wasteful spending to fund tax relief for struggling families and businesses.

Ex-Welsh Tory leader Andrew RT Davies was equally scathing about the expenditure.

“Under Plaid Cymru separatists and Labour, Senedd waste is nothing new, but this is a particularly egregious example,” he said.

“Putting this level of resource towards translating eight words is a ludicrous expenditure for which taxpayers will foot the bill.”

The total cost of the research remains unknown.

The research paper acknowledged that the entire four-stage process occurred despite civil servants accepting that “all” Welsh speakers also spoke English.

According to the 2024 Annual Population Survey, Wales has 862,700 Welsh speakers, comprising 28 per cent of the population, yet the study itself notes that “all Welsh speakers are by now naturally bilingual”.

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The Welsh Government defended its involvement, with a spokeswoman stating that 43 staff participated “most through informal, brief discussions in short meetings” or via Teams.

She 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 research was funded by Research England and involved UCL academics.

Despite the limited success in achieving translations, the 28-page report claims the work represents a “groundbreaking achievement for sound studies in Wales” — while simultaneously concluding that further work is needed because “defining the English terms has proven a challenge”.