Uni gives out £425k in grants to promote theWelsh language

NEARLY half a million pounds in grants has been given out by a university to promote the Welsh language.

Bangor University has awarded 26 projects a total of £425,000 for ideas that “promote Welsh in the community and Welsh-language technology”.

The Cymraeg 250 Grant gives projects £20,000 with the aim of increasing people’s daily use of the language and to promote technology which supports the use of Welsh.

One project that has been given the green light is the Language Technologies Unit (LTU) at Canolfan Bedwyr at Bangor University to develop a programme to record people in danger of losing their voices due to health issues.

Participants will be able to record their voices in their native tongue to produce a synthetic natural-sounding version of their own voice.

The service is only available in England, but the LTU will work with health authorities and speech therapists to offer the service throughout Wales.

Delyth Prys, of the LTU, said: “We demonstrated our Welsh-language text-to-speech resources at the Science and Technology Pavilion at the National Eisteddfod in August, where we recorded and built a number of new Welsh text-to-speech voices for visitors. A number of people mentioned that friends and family would need such technology to help them retain their ability to communicate in Welsh with their own voice after its loss.”

Patients will be able to start recording and build their own voices in the new year. The unit is also developing a Welsh-language voice personal digital assistant called Macsen with a grant from the Welsh Government.