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Figure 1: Colin and Cumberland – The BBC Cartoon for Learners
3. Technical Challenges
The main technical challenge posed by the games was the need to adapt game
formulas already existing in English to work with the characteristics of the Welsh
language. This meant that new code specific to the needs of Welsh had to be created.
The lack of ready-made Welsh language components available to form the building
blocks needed to create the word games was a significant disadvantage when compared
with developers creating similar games in a major language. These building blocks for
Welsh had to be created as part of the project.
In order to keep down costs, the project hoped to reuse resources developed
originally for previous digital language projects undertaken by Canolfan Bedwyr. This
is one way that a minority language such as Welsh can keep costs down and make
frugal use of existing components in an attempt to keep pace with greater resourced
languages.
4. Resource Audit
Over the years, as part of its mission to address the needs of Welsh language in
a digital environment, Canolfan Bedwyr has built up a library of language resources,
including digital dictionaries, spelling and grammar checkers as well as the assorted
components such as lexicons and lemmatizers that combine to create such tools. Many
of these resources are either useful or essential when attempting to create games
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