Thursday, July 28th, 2011
Council failing Welsh Speakers, says Plaid Cymru
Plaid Cymru Assembly Member Rhodri Glyn Thomas and parliamentary colleague Jonathan Edwards MP have hit out at Carmarthenshire County Council’s complete lack of Welsh language information on the authority’s tourism website, Discover Carmarthenshire (www.discovercarmarthenshire.com)
Discover Carmarthenshire is produced by the Tourism and Marketing Division of the County Council and is noted to be the ‘official tourist information web site of Carmarthenshire’. The Plaid Cymru politicians have slammed the authority’s complete disregard for the Welsh language and have questioned why taxpayer’s money has been used to develop a monolingual website, a move which is at complete odds with the authorities’ recently adopted Welsh Language Scheme.
In a joint statement, the Plaid Cymru politicians said:
“The Discover Carmarthenshire website is a great initiative to promote the many wonderful things about our country. Nonetheless, we are extremely disappointed that the County Council has completely ignored the Welsh language.
“The move to disregard the Welsh language flies in the face of the recently promoted Welsh Language Scheme in which the County Council advocated it would treat both Welsh and English equally, especially in terms of advertising, publicity and tourism.
“The Welsh language and culture is an asset for the tourist industry in Wales. Tourists are often people looking for a new experience, and therefore the language and culture is a unique selling point which we are fortunate to have. It seems strange that a website aimed at marketing Carmarthenshire wouldn’t make the most of one of our main assets.
“The Council is failing Welsh language speakers. How many more people from all over Wales could be encouraged to discover Carmarthenshire if information was available to them in their native language? One link to an external website with very limited Welsh content isn’t good enough.
“The County Council must explain who authorised the website to be published in English only, and must ensure that such total disregard for the language is never allowed to happen again”
ENDS
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