Scribblings

Out of office

I really like this somewhat daft story about a bilingual road sign in Swansea, Wales. Road signs in Wales use both Welsh and English to get their message across and the local council wanted to put up a ‘No Entry to heavy goods vehicles’ sign on a road near a supermarket.

The Road Sign Person in the council emailed the English version to their in-house translation service. The reply read ‘Nid wyf yn y swyddfa ar hyn o bryd. Anfonwch unrhyw waith i’w gyfieithu’ which Road Sign Person took to be the translation. Unfortunately it translates into English as ‘I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated’ although this wasn’t spotted until the sign had been made up and erected.

Oops!

Posted 1 November 2008, 12:31
Earlier | Later