Overview
- In a paper published in Applied Acoustics, researchers reported only two unanimous Welsh translations from eight English soundscape adjectives tied to the Noise and Soundscape Plan for Wales.
- Participants agreed on vibrant → bywiog and monotonous → undonog, adopted loanwords for chaotic → caotig and annoying → niwsans, and found no single‑word equivalents for four terms.
- The translators judged eventful and uneventful to be alien concepts in Welsh, and the study noted a lack of consensus on pleasant and annoying as single‑word forms.
- The exercise covered pleasant, calm, uneventful, monotonous, annoying, chaotic, eventful and vibrant, using a four‑phase process involving workshops, a UCL review and an away day with translators and language scholars.
- Critics including the TaxPayers’ Alliance and Senedd member Andrew RT Davies condemned the effort as wasteful, while officials said staff input was part of routine work and costs were not disclosed.