Sunday, November 02, 2008

Write Your Out of Office Note in English

From the BBC


When officials asked for the Welsh translation of a road sign, they thought the reply was what they needed.


Unfortunately, the e-mail response to Swansea council said in Welsh: "I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated".


Apparently, this is not the only time Welsh has been translated incorrectly or put in the wrong place:
• Cyclists between Cardiff and Penarth in 2006 were left confused by a bilingual road sign telling them they had problems with an "inflamed bladder".

• In the same year, a sign for pedestrians in Cardiff reading 'Look Right' in English read 'Look Left' in Welsh.

• In 2006, a shared-faith school in Wrexham removed a sign which translated the Welsh for staff as "wooden stave".

• Football fans at a FA Cup tie between Oldham and Chasetown - two English teams - in 2005 were left scratching their heads after a Welsh-language hoarding was put up along the pitch. It should have gone to a match in Merthyr Tydfil.

Oh, well.. we shouldn't blame them. After all, we only speak Australian :-)

1 comment:

Margaret said...

As someone pointed out in another venue, it could well have happened this way: The translator may have indeed put the out-of-office notification in both languages, but the client did not realize that both texts meant the same thing, instead mistaking the Welsh notification for the translation of their text.