Feb 27 2008 by Tomos Livingstone, Western Mail
TECHNOLOGY aimed at helping businesses use the Welsh language has been so successful it is being copied as far afield as China and Sri Lanka.
A small team at Canolfan Bedwyr, a unit at Bangor University, has for several years been creating Welsh-language computer spell-checkers, screen readers and synthetic voices.
The unit – which brings together linguists and IT experts – also creates generic computer tools that can be adapted for use in other languages.
The centre’s model for standardising technical terms was borrowed recently by the Chinese government when it introduced new legislation.
“We were at a conference in the United States and the message came to us: ‘The Chinese are looking for the Welsh’,” said Delyth Prys, head of the Language technologies unit at Canolfan Bedwyr.
“China are standardising their terminology and the basis they’ve used is something we prepared for the Welsh Language Board.”
The unit has also adapted some of its speech-recognition technology for languages in Sri Lanka and India, where it is being used to help blind people communicate.
Tunisia is also considering following China’s example and using Bangor’s terminology standardisation model, and the unit is also exploring a joint project with a US university to help native American speakers.
Some overseas language centres had merely used a computer code published on the internet by Bangor, and adapted it for their own needs with no direct contact at all, Ms Prys said.
The overseas uses of the technology “gives a new perspective on globalisation issues”, she added.
“The Welsh experience is being used by other countries and increasingly people are turning to us for advice.”
Ironically the unit was denied funding by a government body in 2006 for a project to help Manx and Cornish speakers.
Despite a revival in the teaching of Cornish in the county’s primary schools, Canolfan Bedwyr were told their plan for Cornish and Manx software was “of no commercial or industrial value”.
In a memo for the Welsh Affairs Select Committee, which is conducting a wide-ranging investigation into globalisation, Canolfan Bedwyr said that despite their successes, funding and developing the sector remained a problem.
“Despite the opportunities presented to Welsh industry by the emergent SALT (Speech and Language Technologies) sector, the academic knowledge base which should sustain and nurture it is itself perilously fragile. The relatively small number of organisations and fragile research base is surprising given the global importance of speech and language technology.”
The memo refers to a report on the sector in Wales, due to be published next month, which found that only three organisations were working on speech and language technology.
As well as the eight staff in Bangor, there is a team at the University of Lampeter maintaining an online Welsh-English dictionary, and one full-time academic working on speaker recognition and biometrics at Swansea University.
Ms Prys told MPs on the Welsh Affairs Select Committee that, on a like-for-like basis, Exeter University was receiving four times the funding level of Bangor for economically-beneficent projects, meaning keeping up with booming demand from Welsh businesses was proving difficult.
She said, “It’s therefore no wonder we are struggling in Wales to provide the sort of economic services to industry.
“Obviously it will affect our ability to engage with industry and with SMEs, where the main call for our help comes from at the moment.”
The UK Government and WAG should see research into technologies for minority languages as a priority, said Ms Prys.
Plaid Cymru MP Hywel Williams, a committee member, said, “This is a very striking development, which shows that technical innovation arising from the Welsh language can be of great commercial value all around the world.”
