Everybody knows that sometimes people translate things slightly wrong. In this case, they haven't mistranslated anything, but rather put the completely the wrong sentence.
Half of the sign is easy to understand as it is, obviously, in English. But when you translate the Welsh part into English, it reads: "I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated." So that was what went up under the English version which barred lorries from a road near a supermarket.
Swansea Council became lost in translation when it was looking to halt heavy goods vehicles using a road near an Asda store in the Morriston area. All official road signs in Wales are bilingual, so the local authority e-mailed its in-house translation service for the Welsh version of: "No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only". The reply duly came back and officials set the wheels in motion to create the large sign in both languages. The notice went up and all seemed well - until Welsh speakers began pointing out the embarrassing error.
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Bet there were a few red faces over this one. Could be that the translator didn't have their out of office in both English and Welsh or that they did and the official didn't scroll down.
ReplyDeleteBut even if it wasn't in both languages, I'd have thought that an out of office is obvious just by the speed with which it appears. Regardless of the language it happens to be in. Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm guessing your average translation agency takes a little longer than three seconds to get the text back to you.