Producing bilingual content through trio writing

As a bilingual country, all content in the public sector in Wales is produced in both official languages, Welsh, and English.

Although the translation landscape in Wales is quite mature for this reason, there’s an opportunity to explore other ways of working with translators to improve the usability of content in both languages.

And the standard approach to translation is as you would expect:

1. a service produces information in one language – usually English
2. they submit it to a translation team
3. the translators translate it and send it back
4. the service receives and publishes it

There may be a few extra steps if there’s a content or comms team that reviews the content and publishes it online.

But essentially, the information is developed in one language and then translated to the best of the translator’s knowledge to the other.

The Welsh language is then considered at the end of the process: it’s an afterthought.

If you speak, read, or understand Welsh, you probably see the issues that this approach brings in your daily life, both online and offline.

From signs that make little sense, to digital public services that are unusable in Welsh.

There are 2 main reasons for this:

1. language is highly contextual
2. the original content isn’t clear and user-friendly

Translators do their best to produce a usable piece of content that works. But with the little context they’re given, this can be an almost impossible task.

On the one hand, the content they receive to translate isn’t designed to be clear, simple, and usable itself.

On the other, they don’t often get access to the context or the subject matter expert to ask questions and clarify.

Other issues may arise from this approach: because all public-facing communication must be bilingual, every team must factor translation time into its plans.

But this depends on the capacity and workload of the translation team at the time of the request, making it almost impossible for the teams to plan ahead.

Scale that up to an entire organisation that constantly produces all types of content, and it means reprioritisation, sudden urgent deadlines, and unexpected delays. 

Our goal with this project was to understand how we could work with local authorities and Welsh Government during content production to improve public service delivery, bilingually. 

We wanted to include the Welsh language throughout the entire process, so both languages were equally considered. 

We chose to work on the School Essentials Grant because: 

• it had the potential to help families during the cost of living crisis  
• not enough families were applying because of problems with the content  

We hoped this open and collaborative approach would also prevent work duplication for councils and improve their services’ performance. 

Watch the show and tell to learn about the project. 

After some research to better understand the grant, its context and users, we met Natural Resources Wales who had tried a variation of pair writing, and we were keen to learn from their experience.

Pair writing is a technique that brings together a content designer (or writer) and a subject matter expert (or sometimes a researcher) to work on a piece of content.

Trio writing brings in a third person – in our case, a Welsh translator – to create a good piece of content in both languages at the same time.

Producing content that meets user needs that’s clear, easy to understand, and accurate, requires the knowledge and expertise of both a subject expert and content designer.

And having a translator in the room makes sure that both languages are equally considered, and the information works in Welsh too.

Read about the translator’s experience and their role in content design

After the first draft, we ran a content review workshop with stakeholders from Welsh Government and local authorities and carried out usability testing with real users.

Throughout this project, we found value in working in this way for both public organisations and the end user.

The benefits are:

• the translator understands the context of the piece
• the translator can ask questions
• the English is clearer and simpler as a result
• the needs of users are met in both languages
• both pieces reflect the specific nuances and expectations of each language
• the content is more accessible and inclusive in both languages

We are encouraging councils to use the new content on their website. For this, we are developing different tools and resources, including a toolkit that we’ll eventually migrate to our website.

We also want to share our learnings about this way of working, including how we did trio writing and usability testing, and publish them openly.

So, stay tuned!