Jantics

While reading though some stuff at the BBC news site today, I found this.  It amuses me.

These people needed to have a sign made, to tell truck drivers they couldn’t use a certain entrance.
The message they wanted was “No entry for heavy goods vehicles.  Residential site only.”
So far, so good, right?
Well, because it’s a bilingual area, they also had to have it translated into Welsh.  But none of them had any idea how to speak Welsh, so they submitted the phrase to someone whose JOB is to translate things into Welsh.
So far, so good.
They e-mailed the phrase they wanted the person to translate.
They promptly received an e-mail reply written in Welsh.
And they put those words on the sign.

Here’s the sign:

The problem is, the Welsh words actually said “I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated.”

Oops.

I can’t really blame them, though.  They didn’t speak Welsh; they had no clue what the words meant.  Obviously if they’d been fluent in this language, they would have done the translation themselves without any help.
The translation service should have responded bilingually.   If you know your clients can’t speak a certain language, you should probably NOT make a point of writing to them in that language.  (And if you have your e-mail set to “automatic reply”, be sure all your clients can understand your message!)

Other translation mishaps are just plain strange.
Here’s one which tells bicyclists that they must get off their bikes.  The English words say “Cyclists dismount“, but for some reason the Welsh says “Bladder inflammation upset“.

Here’s one where the English says “Look right,” but the Welsh says “Look left“.

So, for all I know, if I sent this blog to a professional service to be translated into Welsh, it might come back as instructions on how to prepare a lovely fish dinner for seven.

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