[lg policy] UK: 'Dim diolch' to Welsh says the world's biggest travel website Trip Advisor

[Harold Schiffman]

'Dim diolch' to Welsh says the world's biggest travel website
Trip Advisor
Credit: Tripadvisor.co.uk

The world's largest travel website has banned reviews in Welsh - even
though it allows 28 other languages including Finnish and Slovakian.

Trip Advisor blocked a museum report by reviewer Emrys Llywelyn because
using Welsh "violated its language policy."

The tour guide, from Caernarfon, North Wales, said he felt "insulted" at
the decision, and called for Wales' national language to be added to the 28
different languages the website already hosts.
Llyn Maritime Museum in Gwynedd
Llyn Maritime Museum in Gwynedd. Credit: llyn-maritime-museum.co.uk

Mr Llewellyn had written a short review of the Llyn Maritime Museum in
Gwynedd, North Wales, before being sent an email from Trip Advisor who said
it "breached their guidelines".

    It's incredibly disappointing. Welsh is a major language but Trip
Advisor don't seem to think so.

        It's difficult to keep a temper about something like this. It is
one of the oldest languages in Europe.

        There is a fight afoot for the rights of our language and Trip
Advisor are making fools of themselves.

– Emrys Llywelyn, tour guide
Trip Advisor

Mr Llywelyn contacted his local MP, Plaid Cymru's Arfon Hywel Williams, who
said he has written to Trip Advisor's London headquarters and urged them to
update their policy.

Mr Williams said: "A review in Welsh would be particularly appropriate to
this attraction, given its location in an area where Welsh is widely spoken
and used.

"Trip Advisor say they represent the largest Travel community in the world.
Clearly they exclude some members of that community, either deliberately or
by default."

According to the 2014 Welsh Language Survey, 673,000 people speak Welsh in
Wales, making up 23 per cent of the population.

Trip Advisor supports 28 languages in total, but has so far refused to
include languages such as Welsh, Catalan, Icelandic and Gaelic.

A spokesman for the website said:

    Trip Advisor currently operates in 47 countries and 28 languages.

        In order to maintain the integrity of our site we have to ensure
that every language in which we operate is fully integrated into our
moderation and fraud detection tools and processes.

        For this reason we are not currently able to host reviews written
in all the world's languages, but as the world's largest travel site we are
constantly exploring opportunities to extend support to additional
languages worldwide.

– Trip Advisor

http://www.itv.com/news/wales/2015-11-19/dim-diolch-to-welsh-says-the-worlds-biggest-travel-website/
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