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"I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated."

by Aaron Hotfelder (RSS feed) on Nov 2nd 2008 at 12:30PM

Translate fail.

In Wales, all road signs must be written in English and Welsh, but as we've seen before, it's easy for things to get lost in translation. When English officials e-mailed a Welsh translator with their latest project, the response (in Welsh) came back, "I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated." You can guess what happened next.

According to this BBC article, there have been all kinds of similar mistakes recently in Wales-- mistakes that happen when native speakers don't proofread signs before they're made. Two more examples they cite:

In Cardiff, a sign for pedestrians said "Look right" in English and "Look left" in Welsh.
A bilingual sign for cyclists warned them, in Welsh, that they may have problems with an "inflamed bladder."

Huh?

Filed under: Arts and Culture, United Kingdom

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Robert Blackie Nov 2nd 2008 10:32PM

I just laughed me @ss off!!! Hysterical..

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