How to localise social media content for Welsh and English audiences

What to take away

Know which Welsh language duty applies

Welsh Language Standards are set by the Welsh Ministers in regulations made under the Welsh Language (Wales) Measure 2011, and monitored and enforced by the Welsh Language Commissioner. They apply to the public bodies named in those regulations — the Welsh Government, county councils, national park authorities and NHS bodies in Wales among them — and to some private firms delivering public services under contract. If your brand falls outside that list, a Welsh language social media strategy is a commercial choice rather than a legal one.

What the Commissioner can do matters as much as the wording of the duty. Where a listed body has failed to meet a standard, the Commissioner can issue a compliance notice setting out what the body must do and by when, and requiring it to show how it has put things right. That is what turns the Welsh version of a social post from a courtesy into a requirement.

The equal-treatment principle is older than the Standards. The Welsh Language Act 1993 put Welsh and English on an equal basis in the provision of public services in Wales, and later duties built on that foundation.

The 2021 census, published by ONS, found 17.8% of people aged three and over in Wales could speak Welsh. ONS language data also breaks that down by local authority, which is more useful for campaign planning than one national figure.

A five-step localisation sequence

A repeatable sequence keeps Welsh posts out of the last-minute translation pile.

The pre-release quality checklist puts the same claim test on both language versions before either is scheduled.

Work through this list before either language version is scheduled:

Translation or transcreation: choose by risk

Not every post deserves the same treatment, so pick the route before anyone writes: transcreation, where the Welsh version is rewritten for effect; translation plus native review, where the meaning is fixed and a first-language speaker checks it; or straight translation for short standard messages such as opening hours. Match the route to the risk in the claim, not to the length of the text.

Cultural detail that translation misses

Welsh is not English with the nouns swapped. Mutation, verb-noun patterns and idiom make a literal rendering read as a translation, and audiences spot it fast.

Place names have official Welsh forms: Caerdydd for Cardiff, Abertawe for Swansea, Casnewydd for Newport and Wrecsam for Wrexham. The Welsh Language Commissioner publishes the list of standardised Welsh place-names, which is the reference to check before you write. Using the English form inside a Welsh sentence reads as careless, and so do English school-holiday dates pasted into a Welsh calendar.

Humour travels badly when transferred rather than rewritten. A joke that works on an English-language page may need a different setup in Welsh, or none at all.

Welsh should not be decoration. A bilingual logo over an English-only post is the pattern audiences criticise most, because it signals compliance rather than respect.

Budgeting trips on the same point. A per-word rate set for French will not cover a Welsh rewrite, and pricing multilingual social media translation per word in the UK sets out which line items to separate.

Approval, evidence and measurement

Ad rules do not change with language. The CAP Code applies to a Welsh ad just as to an English one, and the ASA advertising codes define recognisable advertising.

Keep a short record for each Welsh post: source brief, reviewer name, approval date, scheduled time, and the evidence behind any claim.

Measurement needs a language split that the platforms do not give you by default. Tag each post by language in your scheduling or social media management tool — Sprout Social and similar tools let you report by tag — add a language marker to your link tracking, such as ?lang=cy, so GA4 groups the traffic, and pull reach, comments and saves per post from Instagram Insights or Meta Business Suite.

Judge Welsh posts on comment rate and repeat engagement, not impressions, which include people who scroll past both versions.

Common questions

Does my business have to post in Welsh?

Only if the Welsh Language Standards apply to your organisation. They are set by the Welsh Ministers in regulations and enforced by the Welsh Language Commissioner, who can issue a compliance notice where a body fails to meet one. Private brands outside that group can choose, and should not imply a duty they do not have.

Is machine translation good enough for social posts in Welsh?

No. Welsh morphology and mutation make raw machine output unreliable for anything published in your name, so a Welsh-speaking reviewer should see every post before it goes live.

Should we run one bilingual account or separate Welsh and English accounts?

One account with clear language switching suits most brands because it keeps the audience together. Separate accounts make sense when the two audiences need different offers or service hours.

How do we measure Welsh language marketing when most readers are bilingual?

Tag posts by language and compare comment and share rates within each group. Bilingual readers often reply in English, so read what replies say rather than the language they are written in.