4. Statement by the Minister for Welsh Language and Lifelong Learning: The Welsh-language Technology Action Plan

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:40 pm on 23 October 2018.

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Photo of Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan Labour 3:40, 23 October 2018

(Translated)

Thank you very much. I think—just on that first point, of course, we’re not going to be using machines to try to teach people how to speak Welsh, but I do think it’s important that we do innovate with education through digital and technological means, and I think that there is a possibility to increase educational provision through the medium of Welsh. We’re doing something at the moment with E-sgol, which is a project, and we’ll see how it works out. Sometimes, we do have to be innovative but, no, this isn’t going to replace teachers in our classrooms.

I do think that it’s important for us to understand how complex these machines are. And thank you very much for the question about how we assess progress. What’s important is that there is an understanding here that this is a plan that is long term in nature. We’re not going to turn this around overnight, but it is something where we will have to continue to work hard, because the technology will change on a weekly basis almost, and so we do have to keep up with those developments. But there is already a great deal of collaboration with some other nations. I know that the centre in Bangor is working closely with Ireland, for example, on how they're developing their translation memory. I do think that there is a possibility here for us to benefit from the developments, but also to turn it into something where we can sell these ideas and these technologies worldwide, because what we’re talking about here is not something monolingual in Welsh, but bilingual. There are hundreds of nations worldwide that will be looking for this technology, so there are opportunities and possibilities that this is something that can be marketed, then, worldwide.

Now, how are we going to benefit from this plan? One of the things that’s important for us to do, of course, is to ensure that the public sector comes together, where possible, to collaborate, so that, for example, we develop a translation memory, if you’re going to translate. Every local authority in Wales does translation in some way. If we get these machines to communicate and speak to each other, the technology and the artificial intelligence will work much better with more input into the system.