If you live in Wales, or maybe the wider UK, you may be familiar with this story from earlier this week:

Everyone reports that the grafitti daubed on the farm reads "English out". Hence the racism.

Except it doesn't. The grafitti "Cai Maes Sais" is practically gibberish. Apparently, it SHOULD read "Cer Mas Sais". So where does the "Cai Maes Sais" come from?

Well... if you go to Intertrans, the translation software, and type in "Get Out Englishman", it comes back as "Cai Maes Sais". Incorrect, BUT it implies that the person who wrote the graffiti wasn't a Welsh-speaker at all. It was someone who used translation software to make up a Welsh slogan. Why would people in a Welsh speaking area use translation software? It also implies that no-one from the news services bothered to check up, they just reported it as they were told.

Translating Welsh by machine isn't a straightforward matter, so it's not all InterTrans fault Infact, machine translation is a common problem. If I was Dyfed-Powys police I would be looking at local computers, to see if any of them had used a translation website or similar in the day or two before the attack. this thread is illuminating.

I've been looking around for the cheapest place to buy Cysgliad, which is a Welsh dictionary/thesaurus/spellchecker for Word and OpenOffice.org. But it's the same price everywhere, £50ish. Wow, that's expensive for what it is. And it's far more expensive for home or business users that it is for government-ish users, which is arse-backwards if you ask me. If you work for the council, Cysgliad will be on your machine. College, voluntary organisations etc can all get it in bulk, and encourage all their employees to use it. Which is fine, and the software is widely used.

BUT... what about the kids at home? The small business? The blogger?

IMO, and no-one will pay attention but I'll say it anyway, Cysgliad should be a kind of shareware model: free for home/non-commercial use, a minimal fee for commercial use. Come on Bangor Uni, let's get this software into every house in Wales. I know you have to make your money back, but considering it was partly funded by the Welsh Language Board, lets not be greedy here. Afterall, they claim "The Board's main aim is to make it easier for everyone to use Welsh in all walks of life." As long as you can afford it, it seems. A paper dictionary and a paper thesaurus will cost me what.. £6 each? Sell Cysgliad for £20 and THEN you'll see a profit, simply because of the increase in sales volume.

Of course, the users could rebel, and say you don't actually NEED Cysgliad. Spot the odd one out:

The Welsh spell checker for Office 2007 is a free download from Microsoft. They also have Office 2003, XP and Vista packs for download. For FREE.

The latest version of OpenOffice.org, Welsh Version, is also free.

Cysgliad, the Welsh spell checker, dictionary and thesaurus developed by a University and funded by government is.... £50. Doh! But wait... the OSX version of Cysgliad, from the same people, is.. FREE! What the hell...?

Of course, if the Cysgliad people would like to send me a copy, I'll stop ranting about the cost lol

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update: hmmm... the OSX version is just a bunch of Python scripts. I wonder....... ;)

There was a geezer called Evan Evans, a self-made businessmen, who aquired some land in the 1860s and opened several mines, and set up a village called Evanstown.

Evan Evans couldn't speak English, and it is said that on one occasion he was called as a witness at a court and had to use an interpreter. The Judge in charge of the case commented his astonishment that a man in his position hadn't learned and used English, to which Evans replied "Tell him not more astonishing than he, a Magistrate in a Welsh town, does not know the language of its people".

Reminds me of that Thomas Cook fiasco recently, when workers in the branch in Bangor where forbidden to use Welsh. Strange, considering they were Welsh speakers, in a Welsh speaking town, in Wales. Ah, but the new manageress was English. So rather than just learn Welsh, she kicked up a storm by stopping everyone else from talking it. I wonder - if they had a store in Paris, would they forbid its employees from speaking French?

No, not Ents.

I've been attempting to trace my family tree. It started off as a casual "I wonder..." and is now practically an obsession. From what I've been able to work out so far, my family spent the last 200 years in and around Merthyr Tydfil. Originally they came from Carmarthenshire. Some time in the early 1800s the family up-sticks, kids and all, and moved to the valleys.  Guess the valleys must have been booming back then. Unlike now, where its just plain depressing. Although, saying that, I'm not complaining, because nature is starting to reclaim the 200 years of damage done by steel and coal. Give it another 50 years and you wouldn't know that there had been heavy industry here at all. Apart from the rows of houses lining the valleys.

One thing that I did find quite depressing. In the early 1800s, the census results show that they spoke Welsh. Maybe a few words of English. Cut to the last census available, 1901, and it shows the kids spoke English (with maybe a few words of Welsh). Church and education and state and industry did well to almost kill off a language within 3 generations. They would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for them pesky Nationalists :)