When language and government don’t meet up

As an Italian researcher working for the British government, I spend a lot of my time getting to grips with unfamiliar cultural contexts. But recently I worked on a research project which explicitly had cultural context at its heart.

Earlier this year at GDS we conducted a qualitative research project on GOV.UK’s Welsh content. This was a joint research project run in collaboration with the Wales Office.

The goal of the research was to understand why fluent Welsh speakers choose to use English when interacting with government online — something we had discovered via web analytics. To understand this we had to explore Welsh people’s relationship to their language and their interaction with the government more deeply.

Approaching the research

We mainly recruited people via social media for this study. We wanted to have a diversity of users in gender, age and location, but it was also important for all of them to be digitally savvy. Social media platforms, as we then discovered, are perceived as non-threatening digital spaces because the Welsh adopted is usually conversational — so no matter your Welsh proficiency every Welsh speaker can easily join any discussion. A perfect avenue to recruit Welsh speakers.

The research was carried out by a Welsh researcher because it was very important to us that people could do the interviews completely in Welsh. Afterwards our team and the Welsh researcher carried out a joint analysis. It was fundamental for us to understand Welsh culture to better grasp the reason behind users’ thoughts and actions. Collaborating with the Welsh researcher helped steer our understanding and provide answers to our many questions.

Taking this approach was practically easier, but on an emotional level it was harder. To really comprehend a culture you need to personally immerse yourself in the context and be surrounded by the people. It’s only then you start noticing those patterns that make a culture — especially if you don’t belong to it. Despite this we found that what people had shared about their interaction with the government was so heartfelt that we still felt a strong empathic connection to them.

Welsh people and language

“I speak Welsh with my family on a weekly basis but I don’t really read or write much in Welsh.”

By discovering more and more about Welsh culture, we understood more and more about Welsh language. As with many other languages, Italian is one of them, in Welsh there are two types of Welsh: a colloquial, informal type and a professional, formal type.

For example we met Alan, who is based in Cardiff, South Wales. He grew up speaking Welsh with his family and friends but all his education was in English and his workplace is English speaking too. Today Alan mainly uses Welsh at home with his kids when they watch Welsh children’s TV programs together. Even if his primary language is now English, he really wants his children to be able to speak Welsh because it’s part of who they are.

Alan identifies as being a fluent Welsh speaker, but he’s really only fluent in colloquial Welsh; because of where and how he uses Welsh, he doesn’t have any ‘professional’ or formal Welsh vocabulary.

Welsh people and the government

“I can do a lot of things in my life through the medium of Welsh, but dealing with the UK government is not one of them.”

Recently Alan had to use online government services and, although he’s not confident in ‘official Welsh’, he wanted to give the Welsh version a try. While going through some of the information online, Alan started to feel nervous. He felt he couldn’t understand everything he was reading. Sentences seemed translated for accuracy, but not for ease of understanding. They contained long and complicated Welsh words not found in everyday use. It didn’t feel the Welsh he uses and can understand. Despite his initial intent, Alan had to switch back to the English service so that he could make sure he understood what he was doing.

We heard many experiences like Alan’s. We also found out that Welsh services include more offline elements and are slower than their English counterparts because an end-to-end Welsh experience is rarely offered. People are frustrated by this, and that they’re presented as Welsh services but are not entirely in Welsh across all the touchpoints they rely on. For example you might fill out a form in Welsh and receive the correspondence back in English.

To improve the experience of the many Alans interacting with Welsh content and services on GOV.UK, we need a different approach. We need to start designing Welsh content. It’s not good enough to simply translate content from English. This means taking an iterative, user-centred approach to Welsh services that ensures the usability and clarity of the Welsh content. We need to prioritise making better and more complete Welsh services over making Welsh versions of all content using the current translation-only approach.

On a more general level, when designing a multi-language service, you need people on your team who can speak those languages and can bring that perspective across all the different disciplines involved in creating a service. Otherwise it will just end up being an afterthought.

For more on this project and others from GDS, check out the GDS user research blog