We were amazed to find out about the following story that appeared on the BBC’s website last week
Email error ends up on road sign.
Have a look at the sign below.
Picture source - BBC News
If you don’t speak Welsh then it won’t mean much to you (which is where the problem originated).
The Welsh text actually says.
“I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated”
How can this happen?
It’s fairly easy to do if you think about it. You email your favourite translator, they email you back an automated response, you think it looks fine, you send it to your favourite sign writer, they make the sign, you put the sign in the public eye and make yourself look like an idiot.
Its all made worse by the fact that the sign was produced by Swansea Council.
The story was first broken by Welsh language magazine Golwg. Dylan Iorwerth (Golwg’s Managing Editor) said,
“We’ve been running a series of these pictures over the past months.
They’re circulating among Welsh speakers because, unfortunately, it’s all too common that things are not just badly translated, but are put together by people who have no idea about the language.
It’s good to see people trying to translate, but they should really ask for expert help.”
Why didn’t anyone check the text?
It could be anything… most of the time we hear that people simply do not have the budget to have these things produced by using a professional language translation company so they cut corners. But to have this text professionally translated and then the final product checked/reviewed/proofread could cost as little as £20, which is a lot better value than having the sign produced and installed twice.
