Transcription · Welsh
Welsh transcription services
Native Welsh transcribers for public sector meetings, legal proceedings, broadcast material, research interviews and corporate content. Northern and Southern varieties, bilingual Welsh-English recordings, verbatim or clean read, time-coded and format-ready.
About Welsh transcription
Find the right Welsh transcription for your project
Welsh is one of Europe's oldest living languages, spoken natively by over half a million people in Wales. It holds official status under the Welsh Language (Wales) Measure 2011, which places a duty on public bodies to deliver services in Welsh — making it the only language with de jure official status anywhere in the United Kingdom.
The language has distinct regional varieties, broadly Northern and Southern Welsh, differing in vocabulary, pronunciation and idiom. It also uses consonant mutations that change the opening letter of a word depending on grammatical context, a feature that makes automatic speech recognition markedly less reliable than it is for English.
At GoLocalise, we work with professional Welsh transcribers who handle these variations natively, and a project manager who stays on top of every step — from briefing and speaker identification through to proofreading, time-coding and final delivery.
Choose your format
Three ways to transcribe the same recording
The right one depends on what the transcript is for. If you are not sure, tell us the use case and we will recommend it.
Full verbatim
Every wordRecords every spoken detail, including pauses, filler words, repetitions and hesitations, exactly as they occur.
Best for
Legal proceedings, research interviews, focus groups
Edited
Clean readRemoves redundant words and hesitations while keeping the meaning and the speaker's intent fully intact.
Best for
Committee minutes, interviews for publication, content to be translated
Summarised
Key pointsCondenses the discussion into structured key points rather than a full record of the conversation.
Best for
Executive briefings, legal summaries, research documentation
What's included
What comes with every Welsh transcript
Welsh, English, or both
A source transcript, an English translation, or the two side by side. For public-sector and legal work the two-step route leaves you a verifiable Welsh-language record alongside the English.
Language switches marked
Where a recording moves between Welsh and English mid-sentence, every switch is marked so the transcript reads correctly in both.
Mutations handled and indexed
Mutated forms transcribed as spoken, with the base form noted where you need the document to be searchable.
Timecodes
Stamped at the interval you need — per speaker turn, per paragraph or at fixed intervals.
Speaker identification
Every turn attributed, by name where you supply them or by role where you don't.
Your format
Word, PDF, plain text, Excel or a subtitle-ready file — tell us the next step.
How it works
One project manager, from brief to delivery
A structured workflow, built so accuracy and confidentiality are verified at each stage rather than assumed at the end.
Brief review
We review your audio, the subject matter, any speaker lists and your target output, so we have everything needed for an accurate transcript.
Transcriber assignment
We match your project to a native Welsh transcriber with the right regional background and subject expertise, whether legal, medical, broadcast or public sector.
Transcription & quality check
The transcript is produced and checked against the source audio, with speaker labels, timestamps and any required formatting applied.
Delivery
Clean, time-coded transcripts in your chosen format, on budget and on time.
Tell us where the recording was made and whether the speakers move between Welsh and English. Both are easy to assign for at the start and expensive to discover halfway through.
Who we work with
Industries that rely on Welsh transcription
In some sectors a Welsh-language record is a statutory requirement, in others an accessibility one. These are the briefs we see most.
Government & public sector
Council meetings, consultations and committee proceedings, where the Welsh Language Standards apply.
Legal
Hearings, statements and case material, transcribed verbatim and formatted to requirement.
Broadcast & media
News, interviews and documentary material, with subtitle-ready templates.
Academic & research
Field interviews, oral histories and Welsh-language research recordings.
Health & education
Training material, patient-facing content and classroom recordings.
Corporate
Board meetings, internal communications and staff training for organisations operating in Wales.
Confidentiality
Who hears your Welsh audio
Welsh transcription often means council proceedings, legal statements, patient-facing material or interviews recorded with people who have good reason to expect discretion. So who hears it matters as much as how accurately it is captured.
Your files are uploaded through an encrypted system, handled by a named Welsh transcriber under NDA, and never fed into public speech-to-text tools. We will sign your own confidentiality agreement, follow your retention rules, and delete everything on delivery if your policy requires it.
Encrypted upload
No loose files over email.
NDA as standard
Yours or ours, before we start.
No public AI tools
Your audio never trains anything.
Deletion on request
Files removed on delivery if you need it.
Welsh specifics
The first letter of a Welsh word is not fixed
Welsh mutates the opening consonant of a word according to grammatical context. Cath (cat) turns up as gath, nghath and chath. Cymru turns up as Gymru and Nghymru. Same word, four different first letters, and all of them correct in their place. A transcriber who does not know this either writes what an English-trained ear thinks it heard, or silently normalises the form and changes the grammar.
The consequence is specific to transcription, and it is the one clients discover late. A Welsh transcript is not searchable if the reader does not know about mutation. Someone running a find on Cymru through forty pages of minutes will not match yng Nghymru, and will conclude the subject never came up. It is also why automated tools struggle: the model has to recover a base form from an initial letter that is not its own. We transcribe the mutated form as spoken and, where the document has to be searched or indexed, note the base form alongside it.
Then there is the regional split. Northern and Southern Welsh differ in everyday vocabulary — rŵan against nawr for "now", llefrith against llaeth for "milk" — as well as in pronunciation and idiom. Standard written Welsh covers most general content, but if the audio carries a strong regional accent or dialect-specific terms, we assign a transcriber from that region. Tell us where the recording was made and we will match it.
Transcription rates
Professional Welsh transcription
Best for single-speaker interviews, dictation and short corporate content.
- Native Welsh transcriber
- Verbatim or clean read
- Speaker identification
- Proofreading pass
A complete managed service for legal proceedings, broadcast material, multi-speaker focus groups and bilingual Welsh-English projects.
- Everything in Standard
- Region-matched transcriber
- Timecodes and speaker IDs
- Welsh and English in one pass
Priced by runtime, audio quality, number of speakers and turnaround, and backed by our Price Match Promise. Send us a sample for an exact, no-obligation quote.
Trusted by global brands
We have used GoLocalise on a regular basis for projects in a number of languages. The service we receive is great. The team is always friendly and professional. The voiceovers we receive are of a very high quality and the turnaround is extremely quick. We are very happy to recommend GoLocalise to other businesses.
It was a pleasure to work with David and the team at GoLocalise. David gave me lots of help and advice, guiding me through my first subtitling project. He really knows his stuff! The experience was completely pain-free. I would not hesitate to recommend GoLocalise – outstanding work at a good price.
They're reliable, adaptive and obsessed with quality. And while you can never be 100% guaranteed of perfection, you can be sure GoLocalise will go the extra mile to get it right every time. We've worked with them now for over 5 years and we are truly thankful to have such a strong localisation partner for our business.
Most common questions
Which Welsh dialect should the transcriber be familiar with?
Most general content works with standard Welsh, but Northern and Southern varieties differ in pronunciation, vocabulary and idiom. If your audio features a strong regional accent or uses dialect-specific terms, we assign a transcriber from that region. Tell us where the recording was made and we will match it.
Can you handle bilingual Welsh and English audio?
Yes. Much of the Welsh-language content we handle switches between Welsh and English within the same recording, particularly in interviews, broadcast programmes and public-sector meetings. Our transcribers work bilingually and mark each language switch, so the final transcript reads naturally in both rather than being stitched together from two separate passes.
How quickly can a Welsh transcription project be delivered?
Most short projects are delivered within 24 to 48 hours, but the exact turnaround depends on audio length, audio quality and whether time-coding is required. At the start of your project, your project manager will confirm the timeline.
Why can't I just run Welsh audio through an automated tool?
Because Welsh mutates the opening consonant of a word depending on grammatical context, so the same word appears with several different first letters. An automated model has to recover the base form from an initial that is not its own, and it frequently gets it wrong in a way that reads as fluent Welsh while saying something else. Add regional vocabulary and mid-sentence switching into English, and the output needs enough correction that starting from a native transcript is faster.
Will I be able to search the Welsh transcript?
Yes, if you tell us that matters. Because of mutation, searching a Welsh document for a word in its base form will miss every mutated instance — a find on Cymru will not match yng Nghymru. Where a transcript has to be searched, indexed or used as a reference record, we note base forms alongside the spoken ones so nothing is lost to a keyword search.
Do you work with Welsh Language Standards requirements?
Yes. The Welsh Language (Wales) Measure 2011 places duties on public bodies in Wales, and a proceeding held in Welsh but recorded only in English leaves a gap in the file. We produce the Welsh-language record, the English alongside it, or both, formatted to whatever your organisation's scheme requires.
Is my audio kept confidential?
Yes. Files are uploaded through an encrypted system, handled by a named transcriber under NDA, and never fed into public speech-to-text tools. We can sign your own confidentiality agreement, work to your retention rules and delete everything on delivery.
What formats do you deliver Welsh transcripts in?
Word, PDF, plain text, Excel or a subtitle-ready file, with timecodes and speaker labels where you need them. Tell us what the transcript is for and we will deliver it in the format the next step requires.
Ready to transcribe your Welsh audio?
Send us the files and tell us where they were recorded — we'll come back with an exact, itemised quote.
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