Sign Trouble
When a Swansea council official needed a road sign to be translated from English to Welsh recently, he used an online translation service. Not being fluent in Welsh the official mistook the email response that was received as being the translation, when in fact it was an out of office reply from the translation agency. The official then proceeded with the text and had the sign printed.Often Welsh translations are organised by folks who are not Welsh speaking and have no understanding of the language. Most signs should to be translated from English to Welsh and vice versa. Dylan Iorwerth, Editor of a Welsh based language magazine, who is fluid in the language himself said that they really should use someone who speaks both languages.The error was only picked up when pictures of the offending sign started circulating on the net. What should have read “No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only” now read as, “I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated”. Iorwerth from Golwg magazine said, “(The pictures) are circulating among Welsh speakers because, unfortunately, it’s all too common that things are not just badly translated, but are put together by people who have no idea about the language”. He added, “It’s good to see people trying to translate (Welsh) but they should really ask for expert help”.Swansea councils answer was simply that their attention had been drawn to the mistranslation of a sign. Welsh became mandatory for all school children in the country in the early nineties after a broad revival of the language. It is blatantly evident though that while the signs are all too apparent for Welsh speaking subjects, many residents are not at all fluent with the language. One such sign includes a sign which stated to English pedestrians in Swansea to ‘Look Right’ while Welsh pedestrians were directed to ‘Look Left’. Another Welsh translation for cyclists near Penarth confusingly told them that they had problems with an inflamed bladder. Hopefully the same mistakes aren’t happening for legal translations as that may cause a slightly more serious consequence. Legal translations need to be done with due care by qualified and responsible legal translation companies. According to the BBC, this is not the first of such incidents, simply the most recent in a series of similar incidents.
