UKC

Ysgrifennai Eben Myrddin Muse am glogwyni a chwareli tywodfaen llai adnabyddus De Cymru gyda dringo sport, traddodiadol, a bowldro ar gael...

This article is also available in English.

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Diolch am sgwennu'r erthygl yn y Gymraeg, da iawn!

Dwi'n cytuno gyda'r rhan fwyaf o'r geiriau newydd a chafwyd eu cyfieithu, heblaw am "cwffwyr-cerrig-mân". Fel dywed y Saes, it doesn't quite roll off the tongue! 

Falle base 'bowldwyr' yn gweithio'n well?

Edit: Ah! 'Mond ar ôl darllen y fersiwn Saesneg weles i dy fod ti wedi cyfieithu pebble-wrestlers! LOL 

Haha, digon teg - oni'n eitha balch o'r un yna mae rhaid fi ddweud! Dwi' ddim yn meddwl y byddwn i'n ei defnyddio hi yn lle "boulderers" (bowldrwrs, bowldrwyr, bowldwyr?) o hyd chwaith. Diolch am yr adborth!

Article gwych, lot o dda-da yma.

Whilst I know rule number one of asking about why people are downvoting is 'don't ask why people are downvoting', within this particular case I am genuinely curious.

We've published this article in both Welsh and English, so there's nothing taken away from anyone. If anything, it's simply a case of 'more is more', and something that should be celebrated.

If anyone cares to answer I'd love to know...

there will always be sad people Rob.... 

We did consider turning off the voting on the thread, but thought that was a bit defeatist, as it's good not to let this sort of thing go unchallenged.

FWIW, I very much doubt anyone can provide a good reason why - other than a moment of extremely poor judgement.

^This 

Yeah but I clicked on the English language version but when I went in it suddenly started being written in Welsh!

I doubt it. More like a lifetime of learned and lived bigotry.

What might be a nice touch for articles like this (assuming this is the first of many) would be two different "Read More" links, one for each... 

Oh the shock of living in a multi-nation country must have been unbearable...

I mean the clue is in the name right? UK Climbing... So Welsh should be represented

Yeah but what have you done at Trebanog?

Arguably far far too much

I think you might have misunderstood, I was making a joke about the ridiculous trope you hear about Wales and how when an Englishman walks into a pub everyone switches from English to Welsh.

Also, I really appreciate the messages here - I didn't write it bilingually to make any kind of statement really. I chose a subject matter that I would have written anyway, that is nothing to do with the Welsh language, because I wanted it to feel pedestrian. 

Nice to feel it was a welcome step according to most people, hopefully I we can get some more out there in future, from other writers too.

Aye diolch am hwn, da ei weld fel ma rhai wedi dweud

cwffwyr-cerrig-mân

Dim yn gweithio i mi, clogfaenwyr efallai

Edrych ymlaen i'r erthygl nesaf

You lack judgement, I wasted time and used the electricity to power your server to access something I cannot read. Please indicate beforehand that an item has special requirements to be accessed for the sake of the planet.

I didn't downvote and thoroughly approve of the expansion of the content. But I would speculate that confusion is a possible cause of the downvotes. I didn't recognise that it was going to be a Welsh-language article when I clicked into the thread. "Destination Guide" was still in English in the thread title so I just assumed it was for a crag with a Welsh name that I hadn't heard of before. In the thread itself, I realised that it was a Welsh-language article, and nearly didn't bother clicking the link. If I hadn't, I never would have realised that it was also available in English. Not that I would have minded, I'm totally at peace with not everything being for me, but some people aren't. Maybe worth having dual links in threads for dual-language articles. Not because people who get offended by other languages existing are necessarily worth pandering to, but just because you don't want non-Welsh-speakers missing out on content that they might not realise is also available in English. I'm sure there's another thread for the English version but it hasn't generated the attention this one has so I haven't noticed it.

Ymaflwyr meini i minnau. Ti'n dweud pytato, dwi'n deud pytatw.

A bit harsh considering you wasted electricity on this thread too.. 

I assumed that it was a tongue in cheek comment.

Cheer up Jim, have you come across the "simple translate" plugin? You can just highlight the text and then hover over and bam. Works a treat on foreign topo's too.

Or if you want to go the old fashioned way, my rates are very reasonable at 50p per word! Get in touch next time you're struggling to read bilingual signs in North Wales and I'll send you the monoglot version in minutes 😁

Gwych gweld yr erthygl 'ma. Hefyd canmol i UKC am gael y ceilliau i gyhoeddi, serch fod e’n drist fod galw am rein er mwyn wneud hyn! Byswn feddwl fod y mwyafrif o ddringwyr, sydd yn teithio'r byd eang, o blaid  amrywiaeth diwylliant ond yn aml yn hollol ddall o’r trysor sydd barod yn bod o flaen ei thrwynau. Mha rhaid gofyn, odi nhw mhoen anialwch gwyrdd fel maes chwarae neu ydynt yn barod i gynnal amryw o ieithoedd a diwylliant o fewn Prydain Fawr yn yr union lefydd maent yn dringo?

Great to see a Welsh Language article on UKC and the supportive comments and brilliant that you have the vision to publish it. Hopefully there will be more to come. Not surprised, though still saddened by some of the negative reaction. The lack of awareness or worse still indifference to the Welsh language amongst the wider climbing community has always been very frustrating; though it is simply a reflection of the prevalent Anglo centric myopia. Surely climbers can do better? As a group we like to travel the world and experience a variety of cultures, which on the whole we value and support. So please, if you were shocked to find out that Welsh is alive and well, take a step back and look to the future. Do you want a sterile, green-desert play-space or can you take an interest and lend a hand for vibrant diverse communities?

This might also be of interest: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001dr7g/dana-scotlands-wild-side-ser...

Diolch Crag! 'Dwi heb weld y gyfres yma - difyr iawn, a wedi ei ffilmio yn wych, yn amlwg! 

Wales is definitely a language of the future - everywhere around me in South Wales there are people learning, people sending their children to newly opened Welsh language schools.

When I first moved here for university I had a bit of a strange, North Walian "ah they speak it in school down here but not properly and then they lose it" preconception, but that idea was utterly broken for me when I started working with kids from those schools who speak it as well, as easily, as I do, and it belongs to them. The Welsh football team has also recently given the language an international platform (also to receive some negative reaction from some quarters).

I was also in New York City recently wearing my Welsh football shirt and was greeted with a "Iawn boi?!" walking down a busy street. 😊 

I had a similar experience when I lived in Keswick. Just returned from a bike ride wearing my Welsh dragon top to a shout of 'Cymru am byth!' from the other side of the road. Immediately felt immense hiraeth....

Eben

Neis i weld ethygl  hwn.  Enwedig am y clogwyn de cymru.  Ron i gweithio yn galed darllen e!

Super article. I knew nothing of climbing in South Wales outside of the Gower. Thank you for an informative and fun read.

And in the comments, it's heartening to read of the resurgence of the Welsh language in the south ! 

Would it be possible to allow me to set a language preference in my UKC profile ... then, where multi language version are available, UKC serves me the article in my stated language preference?

Industry standard solution to this ... surely??

It really didn't bother me to click on the link to the English version. I would welcome more reports written in Welsh, Gaelic, Irish, Cornish, etc. 

Within 10 years I've been working for UKC I can only recall two articles having ever been published in a language other than English (this being one, the other being Natalie's article "Growing Pains - The Weight of Womanhood") and within each there's been a box at the top highlighting that if you didn't want to read it in that language, an English version is available just a single click away.

This feels like a far more workable solution than one where someone has to go into their settings, only to filter out 0.05% of the foreign language articles that we publish on site.

I didn't say it bothered me and I too believe that more content should be available in more languages - not pushing back on that - inclusion is a good thing! 

Generally speaking though, multi-language sites solve for this in 1x of 2 ways:

1. Let users set a language preference in their profile and then serve them content, where available, in their language of preference.
2. Geo-locate them based on their IP and then serve them content based on the primary language of the country of origin.

Both #1 and #2 usually come with an option to override the language - see BBC - https://www.bbc.co.uk/ws/languages

What they don't typically do ... is take a English language site (I don't think it's controversial to categorize UKC as a English language site), serve an article in Welsh, and then require readers to click through to an English version of the same article when the vast (99%?) of their readership won't have been able to read the Welsh language version article in the first place.  

Is it fair to say that UKC was making a statement of sorts by purposely serving the article in Welsh first and English 2nd???  I don't think it's a bad thing that UKC did ... but I think it was some sort of statement - right?  

I think you're reading too much into this. The was no intention of making a statement. The site isn't setup to handle Internationalisation. There's currently no way with specify a language for an article or indeed link alternative versions together in the database. It's a pretty old codebase and all of the front and backend code has been written in house.

Saying that, supporting Internationalisation and better Accessibility is something we're looking at doing with future site upgrades but it is a big task. I think the BBC might have a couple more developers than UKC

Multi-language sites do this yes, however when a minority language is in danger of decline, often there are set rules to help preserve it (e.g. in Quebec where if something is written down in a public space, it legally has to be French as a default). 

This is an article about wales, written by someone who lives there, in their national language. If the author intended it to be published in Welsh as default, it shouldn't ever be in English as a default. 'Translations are available'.

Edited for typos because I was half asleep.

I think the author wrote it in Welsh first.  I missed this article somehow, so I'm sort of glad this thread got a bump.  It's a fine piece of work, lovely photos, lovely words.  And valuable info!
(In both languages presumably, though I'm not a Welsh speaker either.)

After the author took the time and trouble to re-write the entire thing in English for those of us who can't read the original, it seems incredibly churlish to be moaning about a single click to follow a link that is right there to go through to the that version.  Jeezo, talk about entitled.

Just to clarify, the author actually wrote it in English first, then came to us afterwards asking if we'd be interested in publishing it in Welsh (which we were). We then waited until both were ready and published them simultaneously. They were evenly weighted, with neither receiving specific 'special treatment', although for reasons that continue to surprise me - this one received far more comments on the forums afterwards.

For the avoidance of doubt .. my original comments re: the click through were:

"I didn't say it bothered me [to click on the link to the English version] and I too believe that more content should be available in more languages - not pushing back on that - inclusion is a good thing! "

I appreciate that comment could be misconstrued as appearing churlish, moaning and entitled to you ... my apologies if it did.  

Likewise, my apologies if it seems I was picking on you in particular.  I was a little bit, admittedly, but had other posts in mind too.  (Mostly the one that, quite rightly, attracted a ton of down-votes.  That was quite special.)

Ah, my mistake. 

Good on you (and him) for including the Welsh version then - it's no use to me personally but I still appreciate that it enriches the site somewhat with a bit of extra culture. 

I'm not at all surprised by some of the comments (especially after the slightly depressing debacle of the 'Yr Wyddfa' thread).  But in a way I'm glad of the thread bump too because I'd missed the write-up going live originally, so probably wouldn't have seen either version without it.

Rwy'n dweud tatws.

Diolch am sgwennu yn y Gymraeg, a da iawn i UKC am gyhoeddi - dwi'n edrych 'mlaen at weld fwy yn y dyfodol!

Mae'n sbel ers i fi dringo yn yr ardal, gobeithio gwneud eto'n fuan.