Lost In Translation

Whoops.It seemed like a simple enough request. The Swansea council sent an email to its in-house translation service to have a road sign “No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only” translated into Welsh (as is compulsory). Problem was the Welsh translator wasn’t in at the time and the council were sent this message (in Welsh mind you) “I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated”. You guessed it, no one at Swansea council could speak Welsh,so they printed the message on their bilingual road sign.The result was some very confused Welsh truck drivers and a very red faced council. I suppose that this mistake wasn’t as bad as the last translating gaff where a sign for pedestrians in Cardiff read ‘Look Right’ in English and ‘Look Left’ in Welsh.