Professional Welsh Translation Services UK

Welsh (Cymraeg) is an official language in Wales with around 900,000 speakers, and the Welsh Language (Wales) Measure 2011 gives it protected status. Councils, health boards, universities, national bodies and, since March 2026, housing associations must provide services in Welsh, which is why most of the Welsh translation we do is for organisations that publish in both languages every week.

Lingo Service is a Cardiff translation agency with its head office at Cardiff Gate Business Park. Our Welsh translators are native speakers who work in both directions, English to Welsh and Welsh to English, and every translation is revised by a second Welsh linguist before it is delivered. We are ISO 9001 and ISO 17100 certified, Cyber Essentials certified, and we translate for the Welsh Government and Welsh public bodies.

Alongside document translation we offer Welsh proofreading of existing Welsh text, Welsh interpreting for hearings, meetings and appointments, Welsh subtitling, and typesetting of bilingual documents so the Welsh and English versions sit side by side as the Standards require.

English to Welsh is the direction most of our clients need. Correspondence, forms, website pages, policies, consultation documents, signage, job adverts, social media posts and tenant or patient information all have to appear in Welsh, and the Welsh version must not be treated less favourably than the English one.

• Welsh Language Standards work, translated to the wording and layout the Welsh Language Commissioner expects, with the Welsh placed first or level with the English where a standard requires it
• Websites and digital content, translated in your content management system or in export files, with page titles, buttons and error messages included so nothing is left in English
• Marketing and communications, adapted rather than translated word for word, so the Welsh reads naturally to a Welsh-speaking audience
• Bilingual design, we can typeset the Welsh into your existing artwork, leaflets and signage files
• Welsh proofreading, a native check of Welsh you already have, whether it came from a colleague, an earlier supplier or a machine translation tool

Each client gets a glossary and a style sheet, so the Welsh stays consistent when the next document arrives.

We also translate Welsh into English: Welsh-medium school certificates and university transcripts, birth, marriage and death certificates issued in Welsh, chapel and parish registers, wills and older family papers, court and tribunal documents, council minutes and Welsh-language correspondence.

When the translation is for an official purpose, we certify it. A certified Welsh translation comes with our signed statement of accuracy on Lingo Service letterhead, the format UK bodies ask for, and starts from £35 per document. Short certified documents can be turned around the same day from our Cardiff office.

Historical Welsh, dialect forms and handwritten documents are handled by translators who work with older orthography, so a nineteenth-century chapel register is translated as carefully as a modern certificate.

Every Welsh job is handled by a native Welsh speaker who translates into their strongest language, and then revised by a second Welsh linguist. That two-linguist process is what ISO 17100 requires, and it is how mutations, register and terminology get a second pair of eyes before you see the text.

• Native speakers across Wales, so we can match North Walian or South Walian vocabulary to your audience
• Specialists by subject, legal, medical, education, housing, local government and marketing translators rather than generalists
• National tools, Cysill for spelling and grammar, TermCymru and Cysgair for terminology
• Project glossaries, locked terms for each client, so every translator on your account uses the same Welsh
• Confidentiality, Cyber Essentials certified systems and signed confidentiality agreements for every linguist

The Welsh Language Standards are legal duties placed on organisations by the Welsh Language Commissioner through compliance notices. Regulations have been made in numbered sets since 2015, covering the Welsh Government, councils and national parks, national bodies, police and fire services, universities and colleges, health boards and NHS trusts, health regulators, water companies and, since 31 March 2026, registered social landlords. Failing to comply can lead to an investigation and a civil penalty of up to £5,000.

We translate the material the Standards cover every day: letters and emails, forms, website content, signage, meeting papers, recruitment adverts, complaints responses and public consultations. Our Welsh Language Standards translation service is built around the turnaround a compliance notice demands, with framework pricing for organisations that need Welsh every week.

Not sure which standards apply to you? Use our free Welsh Language Standards checker, or read our plain-English guide to the Welsh Language Standards.

We translate a wide range of Welsh documents:

• Welsh Language Standards compliance, policies, correspondence, signage, websites, forms and all public-facing content for councils, health boards, housing associations and other public bodies
• Civil registry documents, tystysgrif geni (birth certificate), tystysgrif priodas (marriage certificate), tystysgrifau cofrestru sifil
• Educational documents, Welsh-medium school certificates, university documents, professional qualifications
• Legal documents, contracts, terms and conditions, policies, court documents requiring Welsh versions
• Healthcare documents, patient information, NHS Wales communications, medical consent forms
• Business materials, marketing content, annual reports, corporate communications
• Government documents, Senedd Cymru documents, Welsh Government correspondence, local authority papers
• Historical documents, older Welsh documents, genealogical records, chapel registers

All translations follow Welsh orthographic conventions and the national terminology standards.

Welsh translation is priced at £0.14 per word, with certified documents from £35 per document. Welsh proofreading is quoted on the text itself, and volume or framework pricing is available for organisations with regular Welsh work.

• Delivery date before you order, upload your document to our quote page and the price and delivery date appear in seconds
• Urgent work, same-day translation is available for short documents, including certified certificates from our Cardiff office
• Larger projects, email the team with the files and the deadline for a written quote, a named project manager and a glossary set up before work starts

Welsh work does not stop at documents. We provide Welsh interpreting for courts, tribunals, NHS appointments, council meetings and events, face to face, by video or by telephone. Our subtitling team produces Welsh and bilingual subtitles for broadcasters, public bodies and corporate video, and we transcribe Welsh audio for research and legal work.

For NHS Wales we run a dedicated NHS Wales translation service, and for Cardiff clients who need a certificate translated quickly there is same-day certified translation in Cardiff.

Need a quick idea of what a Welsh sentence says? Try our free Welsh to English and English to Welsh translator. It is machine translation, fine for gist, but anything you publish or submit should come from a human Welsh translator.