Language Switcher - what we would like your input on

[lewisdarlow-gds]

Background

The GOV.UK Design System team is exploring a Language Switcher contribution from the community to see if the Design System is the right place for this component.

So far our desk research indicates that the experience of translations is fragmented and inconsistent for end-users, and there is a group of non-native English speakers who might struggle to access content.

Our initial focus is on English / Welsh translation, reflecting the need to support Welsh-language content on GOV.UK, but we want to build something that is flexible enough to support multiple languages in the future.

We want to know

• Have you got any user research on a language switcher component or the need for translations?
• Do you use a language switcher in your service and how well is it working?
• If you use a language switcher, what languages do you accommodate?
• Where is your language switcher positioned on the page and why did you make that decision?
• If we shipped this component, what would it mean for your service?
• Is there anything else you'd like us to keep in mind with this work?

We'd like to know your thoughts on this topic. Ways you can give us feedback on this:

• Add a comment to this discussion
• Give feedback to the Design System Team by email
• Give feedback via the #govuk-design-system slack channel or by DM-ing me on UK Government Digital slack

[matteason]

We've used HMRC's Welsh language toggle on services we build for HMRC (I work for a third-party company).

It seems well engineered but there are a couple of points it would be good to address if it was adopted into the Design System.

Firstly the abbreviated ENG / CYM labels are maybe not the most accessible (though there is a visually hidden string which makes it clearer), and are probably not very extensible to other languages

Secondly the positioning in the service navigation is ok for short labels but space in the service nav is at a premium, especially for services with longer names, and again this probably isn't very extensible for other languages. The thirteen-language example on the COVID-19 page would look really out-of-place in the service nav.

[deadliftbear]

Responding for Get a fishing licence.

• Have you got any user research on a language switcher component or the need for translations?

Not specifically. We are Welsh/English bilingual because the service is offered by a Westminster ALB on behalf of a Welsh Gov ALB. We are legally required to be bilingual.

• Do you use a language switcher in your service and how well is it working?

Yes, and people seem to use it. Low numbers, however. You can also start the journey in Welsh from the GOV.UK mainstream content.

• If you use a language switcher, what languages do you accommodate?

English and Welsh

• Where is your language switcher positioned on the page and why did you make that decision?

Top right, below the feedback banner. I think we took this from HMRC, it was about 5 years ago and nobody is around from back then.

• If we shipped this component, what would it mean for your service?

This is part of our page template now, so it wouldn't really make a massive difference to us specifically

[emollett]

Get an energy certificate / Find an energy certificate services
Toggle code

We have a regulatory requirement to provide our service in Welsh.

We don't have any user research on the toggle, we added it after feedback from someone representing a group of users. We haven't had much feedback since.

We took a look at language toggles by DWP, HMRC and ONS when we were building ours and I think went with something similar to the HMRC one at the time. We have since moved it up into the service navigation bar following the guidance here

If you shipped a specific component, we might get around to replacing our component with it at some point, but it would not be very high priority work to do. If it had existed when we created it, we would have used it.

[Jon-Rowe-HMRC]

Hi, I’m the interaction designer for HMRCs pattern team.

Our current welsh language toggle pattern (published December 2025):
https://design.tax.service.gov.uk/hmrc-design-patterns/welsh-language-toggle/

Our previous welsh language toggle pattern (published around 2020 and widely adopted outside of HMRC):
https://web.archive.org/web/20250514182655/https://design.tax.service.gov.uk/hmrc-design-patterns/welsh-language-toggle/

We transitioned from ‘English | Cymraeg’ under the header to 'ENG | CYM' right aligned in the service nav for a number of reasons:

• GDS guidance for the service nav component and pattern mentioning this is where language selection is placed (this was our primary reason for change)
• we tested across a wide range of our services and ‘English | Cymraeg’ required at least 2 line service nav in many more services than 'ENG | CYM' (exacerbating the wider problem that the header area is now often so deep that no/little page content is visible in the initial user viewport)
• we’ve been informed by multiple teams (including our specialist Welsh Language Unit) that ‘CYM’ is more of an orthodoxy than ‘Cymraeg’ for welsh speakers
• we also tried other variations like just the other language link being shown, but these were inferior
• we went through an iterative process with our accessibility team for optimisation for users with accessibility needs e.g. ENG – change the language to English
• closer consistency with our app at the time, which had been showing just ‘CYM’

It’s been a large, complex piece of work for HMRC to update the headers of all of our services, across several underlying platforms to accommodate the new GOV.UK header and service nav, and we included our updated toggle in this work to align with the service nav guidance (plus other HMRC patterns we have related to the header that also required amends due to the changes). The wider header/branding changes have been very expensive, and time consuming. They’ve been deeply unpopular in the wider organisation for those reasons (although teams like my own have welcomed having a cross-gov service navigation pattern, and we were happy to retire our previous navigation pattern). So there would be resistance from our programs to any further change for our organisation.

At least 10 different HMRC service teams have conducted research related to our welsh toggle. At least 3 of these took place since our changeover to our new welsh toggle pattern design. Including several users with neurodivergence and testing with accessibility devices. An overview of the findings:

• users prefer english/welsh toggle to whole journey language switching and absence of feature to toggle within service (only being able to select at start) tested negatively
• welsh speakers familiar with uncommon english specific to the context benefit from both the ability to toggle easily, and from these terms being shown in brackets within the welsh service (to avoid having to do as much switching)
• toggling between languages should not delete inputted data
• persistence of welsh language selection has been an issue in some services - once a user has selected welsh, they should not be switched to english unless they use the toggle.
• welsh users will toggle back and forth between languages to ensure understanding of unfamiliar words and/or to check that both journeys are the same

Despite this fairly wide testing, there have been no findings in research indicating we should change the patterns themselves. The general feeling here is that our current pattern (and its predecessor) worked well. Patterns our teams have problems with generate lots of comments on their GitHub page, but we’ve had zero GitHub comments on this pattern since updating it 6 months ago despite it being in very common use: hmrc/design-patterns#158. The UX issue teams have flagged with us a few times is inconsistency across their journeys as the different teams involved had been at different stages of migration to the new header.

From a development time and cost perspective, we imagine the worst case scenario for us would be moving the welsh toggle back out of the service navigation and into the page. Changing 'ENG | CYM' back to ‘English | Cymraeg’ would be less problematic but that change had previously been agreed as positive across our stakeholders once they were fully aware of the pros and cons, so we’d prefer not to revert.

[lewisdarlow-gds]

All your thoughts have been really useful @matteason, @deadliftbear, @emollett and @Jon-Rowe-HMRC thank you! I'll make sure to share any progress we make on this in here.

[Jon-Rowe-HMRC]

Thanks @lewisdarlow-gds

I met with Lee Jones the Head of the HMRC Welsh Language Unit yesterday. Feel free to contact her direct - I'll send you her email address separately. Lee is very positive about the potential of a welsh toggle that’s consistent across departments and guidance/services from this project - it’s something she’s campaigned for over many years.

The WLU are happy to offer the help of their dedicated welsh language researcher for the development of this pattern.

They also let me know that separate to the research I summarised from our service teams above, they’ve done hundreds of rounds of research specifically for welsh speakers. Based on this, they have no further suggested changes to the welsh toggle pattern we iterated with them: https://design.tax.service.gov.uk/hmrc-design-patterns/welsh-language-toggle/

That said, there have not been significant research findings for our previous vs current pattern (as they didn’t find major issues in their research for either). One significant finding was that the majority of welsh users expect the toggle to be placed at the top right of the page, which was consistent across the two designs.

‘The five Welsh language pillars’ that summarises their research and approach:
5 Welsh language pillars (2).pptx