Hi, I am an anthropologist involved in a bid for funding to do some research in the Dee Estuary which borders Wales and England.
I want to include a Welsh translation of the project title in the research bid. Can anyone help me?
This is the title in English: ‘TechScaping’ the Dee Estuary: Using Data-Ethnography to Investigate Economic Livelihoods in Times of Environmental Change.
And google translate offers the following in Welsh:
‘TechScaping’ Aber yr Afon Ddyfrdwy: Ymchwiliad i mewn i Bywoliaethau Economaidd yng Times o Newid Amgylcheddol
Does this make grammatical sense to a Welsh speaker and would you recommend any changes?
Well your ‘using data-ethnography’ isn’t in there at all. And Times would be something like ‘adagau’ or perhaps ‘cofnodau’.
A good source for academic terminology is the online dictionary at the Coleg Cenedlaethol Cymraeg (http://www.colegcymraeg.ac.uk/cy/adnoddau/termau/). It doesn’t give anything for data ethnography as a concept, but using the terms for the individual words it suggests, I would have thought ‘ethnograffeg ddata’ would be close.
So my attempt at the subtitle would be ‘Defnyddio ethnograffeg ddata er mwyn ymchwilio bywoliaethau economaidd yng nghofnodau newid amgylcheddol’.
But I am no translator, so will be very interested to see what others think!
Thanks! It’s interesting to see what automated translation engines do and don’t understand. I will definitely be trying to learn at least enough Welsh to be able to recognise when whole phrases are missing! Thanks for the suggestion and also for the link to the Coleg Cenedlaethol Cymraeg dictionary.
Yes, sorry it’s a bit impenetrable! I think the ‘economic livelihoods in times of environmental change’ is the most important bit to make sure we get right. The term data-ethnography is not a term that’s even in general use in anthropology!
You’re asking this of someone who doesn’t believe in the existence of grammar?..
My best shot: mine doesn’t bother mutating because it often sounds a bit funny to mutate recent loanwords. Alternative: you’re right and I’m wrong…
The joys of academia… If you could find a Welsh-speaking data scientist with experience of professional translating, they would probably be able to do a more elegant job - but they’re probably a little thin on the ground, so in the meantime a mashup of Sarah and myself here will certainly make it clear to everyone that you’ve run this past live Welsh-speaking humans…
My best shot: mine doesn’t bother mutating because it often sounds a bit funny to mutate recent loanwords. Alternative: you’re right and I’m wrong…
This is, of course, the right answer (both of them!)
According to the Coleg Cenedlaethol ‘ethnograffeg’ is feminine … but that seems like a pretty arbitrary designation, and I think your ear is more authoritative.
Dear @hannahknox, I do realise you came on here for a particular urgent academic reason, but if you want to learn a bit of Welsh so that you can chat to the victims/beneficiaries of the environmental change, this site teaches with a relativel painless method giving much faster results than most courses! I am just a retired Heath Physicist, living in Scotland, and I am not getting commission from @aran!!
ps the Forum is very friendly!
For the same reason, I would say, that it’s tŷ bach and not bach tŷ, Dydd Gŵyl Dewi and not Dewi’s Gŵyl Dydd – Welsh is generally modified-modifier order, the opposite of English.
So this is a kind of ethnograffeg. What kind of ethnograffeg? Why, it’s ethnograffeg-data!
Except I viewed it as what type of data - ethnographic data or the concept of applying/utilising ethnographic data? Data science was once called datology, so in English you could have ethnographic datalogy or data ethnography meaning the same sort of thing. I guess it depends on whether it is a fusion of two concepts or one takes precedence over the other?. I am familiar with chemical biology, but if biochemistry didn’t already exist then an equally valid term called biological chemistry, could have been coined with equal validity.
Yup, if you chose to think of it as ethnographic data, ‘data ethnograffeg’ would be fine - but since we’re coming from ‘data-ethnography’, we’re thinking of ‘ethnograffeg’ as a noun and structuring accordingly. Confuses it slightly that you’d (probably) have the same word in Welsh for ethnography and ethnographic.
I haven’t come across ethnyddiaeth, although it would make sense.
I’ve been a bit geeky and looked up English hyphen rules and the usages and conventions are very varied. Without knowing what Data-ethnography actually means in English then translating it is prone to mistakes - I am guessing that it could be what is termed a hyphenated string, where words are linked together with a hyphen, but the order may be arbitrary initially and then fixed by convention. Im imagining in that case word ordet in Welsh would be based on who ends up creating the Welsh convention and what they choose.
Talking about loan words, did anyone hear a recent programme on Radio Cymru when the presenter stopped herself in mid-flight after saying “stadiau/stadiums” ?
