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From The Times
November 1, 2008

The road-sign message that was lost in translation

Council workers in Swansea erected a road sign informing motorists in Welsh: “I am out of the office at the moment”.

Swansea council staff were designing a bilingual road sign barring heavy goods vehicles from a street in the city and had consulted an in-house translation service.

As the translator was not available, an automatatic e-mail response was triggered in Welsh which read: “I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated.”

Staff mistakenly thought that it was the correct translation and had it printed on the sign beneath the message in English, which read: “No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only”.

The council has taken down the sign at the junction of Clase Road and Pant-y-Blawd Road after Welsh speakers spotted the mistake.

Golwg, a Welsh-language magazine, printed photographs of the sign after being alerted by readers.

Dylan Iorwerth, the managing editor, said: “We have been running pictures of this kind over the past few months.

“It’s good that people want to have bilingual signs but, unfortunately, they don’t make sure someone with a real knowledge of Welsh checks the work through all the different stages.”

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