Translation perils strike again
Learned today from the BBC about this Welsh road-sign, in which the Welsh text is not a translation of the English text (”No entry for heavy goods vehicles…”), but apparently reads “I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated.” Since this was the response that the sign designers got when they emailed the translators the English text, they assumed it was actually the translation. Like in the case of Burton’s patriotic Russian T-shirt, someone really should have checked.
These mistranslation errors seem to be quite common in Wales. They are always going to be more likely in bilingual environments where the two languages are so very different: it’s hard to imagine errors of such magnitude on an English/German, French/Spanish or Polish/Russian sign.
Of the others mentioned in the BBC article my favourite has to be the road sign for pedestrians in Cardiff that reads ‘Look Right’ in English, but ‘Look Left’ in Welsh. I wonder who was trying to get who killed?
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