humor

Bilingual Signage

I was deleting some old mail from my inbox, in the unending quest for zero, when I found this story that I had intended to blog back in October:

English-Welsh Bilingual Sign

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. 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.

Read more…

It seems that there have been other amusingly incorrect Welsh translations over the years, including a sign for pedestrians in Cardiff reading “Look Right” in English which read “Look Left” in Welsh. Then there was the “cyclists dismount” sign between Penarth and Cardiff which was translated into Welsh as “bladder inflammation upset” (or tip or overturn).

At least we in the States don’t have a monopoly on proofreading mishaps.