Cardiff websites carry a requirement few English cities face: genuine Welsh/English bilingualism, done properly — not machine-translated as an afterthought. Add a strong public-sector and visitor economy, and you get builds where language, accessibility and booking reliability all matter. We deliver from Manchester, with bilingual architecture planned from day one.
Cardiff’s website market is defined by language. Public bodies in Wales operate under Welsh Language Standards — Welsh and English must be treated equally, which means the website needs full content parity, not a translate widget. But the expectation has spread: private businesses serving Welsh customers increasingly treat bilingualism as good service, and tourism operators know Welsh-language content reaches an audience competitors ignore.
Done badly, bilingual sites are a liability: auto-translated Welsh that embarrasses the brand, English pages with no Welsh equivalent, language switchers that lose the visitor’s place. Done properly — planned content architecture, professional translation workflows, parity QA — it’s a genuine competitive edge and, for public bodies, a legal necessity.
Alongside language sits Cardiff’s public-sector weight — government, universities, health, culture — with the accessibility and procurement rigour that implies, plus a visitor economy (the Bay, the Castle, the stadium calendar) where booking reliability and event content matter. It’s a market that rewards thoroughness over flash.
Bilingual builds start with content architecture: parallel Welsh/English structures, hreflang done correctly, a translation workflow your team can operate (professional translators in, parity tracking, no drift), and language switchers that preserve context. We QA both languages to the same standard — because a broken Welsh page is worse than no Welsh page.
For public-sector and regulated clients, accessibility is engineered in: WCAG 2.2 AA templates, accessibility statements, and editor training so compliance survives handover. Tourism and hospitality builds add booking-engine integration and event content that’s easy to update around the stadium and festival calendar.
The honest geography: we’re based in Manchester and don’t keep a Cardiff office. Bilingual projects start with an in-person discovery workshop — language planning needs face-to-face time with your Welsh-speaking stakeholders — then run on weekly video demos with staging links reviewable in both languages.
On translation itself, a point of professional honesty: we build the bilingual architecture and workflow, and we work with professional Welsh translators for content — we don’t machine-translate and call it bilingual. If you have in-house Welsh capacity, we design the workflow around your team; if not, we arrange translation as a defined, costed phase.
The graveyard of bilingual websites is full of sites that launched in two languages and drifted into one. We prevent that with process: parity dashboards showing untranslated content, side-by-side editing so translators see context, and a quarterly parity audit in the first year. Someone owns the Welsh content — named, not assumed.
For public bodies this is compliance maintenance; for businesses it’s audience maintenance. Either way, the workflow we hand over makes the second language a ten-minute task per update, not a quarterly project nobody schedules.
Indicative ranges. Bilingual builds cost more than single-language — translation and parity QA are real line items, priced visibly rather than absorbed into vagueness.
Timelines: brochure sites 5–8 weeks (plus translation time), bilingual builds 8–12 weeks, public-sector to procurement timetables. Translation runs in parallel with build where possible — we schedule it, we don’t discover it.
Bilingual and accessible builds sit within website development — Welsh/English parity planned from day one.
Straight answers to what Cardiff businesses ask us most.
If you’re a public body in Wales, yes — the Welsh Language Standards require it. For private businesses it’s a judgement call we’ll help you make: where your customers are and what competitors offer. Partial bilingualism done deliberately beats full bilingualism done badly.
Professional translators — either yours or arranged by us as a costed phase. What we don’t do is machine-translate your site and present it as bilingual. The architecture we build makes ongoing translation manageable: parity tracking, side-by-side editing, QA checklists.
Yes — WCAG 2.2 AA builds with testing records and accessibility statements, plus editor training so compliance survives handover. We’re used to procurement processes: written specs, evaluation criteria, fixed pricing.
No — Google warns against guarantees and we agree with Google. We guarantee senior developers, honest timelines in writing, and technical SEO fundamentals (in both languages) in every build.
Discovery in person in Cardiff, then weekly video demos on staging links you review in Welsh and English. Translation happens in parallel with the build, managed through the workflow we set up — visible, trackable, no surprises.
Where Cardiff organisations go next — services, coverage and contact.
Fixed-price bilingual builds with translation planned and priced honestly — not discovered halfway through.
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