by Lisa Jones, South Wales Echo

RED-FACED teachers have been forced to take down part of their school website after realising a section in Welsh had been translated into gobbledegook.

The website for Llanishen High School, Cardiff, contains a message of welcome from headteacher, Rob Smyth – but its Welsh language version is complete gibberish.

A spokeswoman for the school, which teaches Welsh to A-level standard, said a member of staff had used a free online translation service to get the words, without consulting colleagues.

She added that the staff member was not a Welsh teacher.

One of the paragraphs on the site’s English introduction said: “Nevertheless we would always welcome any helpful comments about the content or presentation”.

That was excruciatingly translated as: “Nevertheless ni would beunydd chroesawa unrhyw helpful sylwadau am ’r bodlona ai chyflwyniad,”

In addition to containing the English words ‘nevertheless, would and helpful’, other words in the translation were in the wrong tense and some of the words were totally meaningless.

Aran Jones, chief executive of Welsh rights pressure group, Cymuned, said using a translation website may leave the user looking foolish. “There seems to have been a lot of these websites creeping up in the last year or so,” he said.

“We are glad to see people wanting to offer a Welsh version but it’s high time people understand that you simply can’t expect free websites to provide you with the proper translation. You are going to make yourselves look silly.”

Rob Smyth, headteacher of Llanishen High, which has been shortlisted for a language teaching award, said: “As we were made aware of the problem, the page was temporarily removed to allow for the necessary corrections to be made. The staff involved in producing the page all worked in good faith and obviously now regret using a translation engine.

“We apologise for the mistake and for any offence caused.

“As a school we have a strong commitment to teaching languages, including Welsh and indeed only this week, we became the first school in Wales to be shortlisted for the CILT European Award for Languages”

Source: icWales, 12 July 2007