A. Price

Introduction: Translation in Wales: History, theory and approaches

Translation is a key part of the present-day ethos of bilingualism in Wales. One crucial point in the process through which Welsh recovered its rightful public role as one of the country’s official languages, after centuries of structural discrimination and invisibility, was theWelsh Language Act of 1993. Since then, translation and interpreting have become central instruments for implementing the policy of legislated bilingualism in Wales, which is based on the principle that through translation and translation-related practices (e.g. codrafting, subtitling, translation pedagogy and the creation of terminologies and computerassisted translation tools), Welsh can regain public visibility and Welsh-language speakers restore their right to conduct as much of their lives as possible in a language compatible with all aspects of the modern world. Under this framework, translation and translationrelated discourses have become a shibboleth for language rights advocacy in Wales, where (sometimes heated) debates about translation range from questions related to civil and political freedoms to matters of governance, public spending and social cohesion. Such debates have received widespread media coverage. One recent example was the controversy surrounding the decision by the Welsh Assembly Commission in 2010 to abandon the practice of publishing a full bilingual record of the proceedings (for which translation services are needed) in order to reduce spending (see the article in this issue by Diarmait Mac Giolla Chríost, Patrick Carlin and Colin H. Williams) or the 35-day imprisonment of Welsh-language activist Jamie Bevan in 2012, whose trial statement amounted to a plea for the right of Welsh-language speakers to receive hearings fully in Welsh, and not always through the mediation of an interpreter. Eighteen years after the passing of the Government of Wales Act in 1998 which initiated the (still ongoing) process of devolving political, legislative, cultural and economic competencies fromWestminster to Wales, views about translation as a means of facilitating Welsh language protection have become more ambivalent. While debate about the contradictory effects of bilingual literary publications and literary self-translation has already marked the field of Welsh literary studies (Clancy 1999, 63–64; Price 2002; G. Davies 2004), open criticism of translation’s part in reversing the Welsh language shift have also begun to appear in contemporary cultural and political commentaries. Certainly, translation has been integral to rebuilding the status of Welsh as a “living language” and to securing the right of Welsh speakers to use their language in situations where they previously would have been forced to switch to English by the pragmatics of politeness. Nevertheless, some cultural