Welsh sign post gets tongues wagging

[faceless]

A Welsh road sign that read "I am out of the office at the moment" has been taken down after bemused members of the public reported the misunderstanding. The offending sign was located by an Asda supermarket.

Swansea Council admitted that the embarrassing error had come about after it emailed its translation service to request help. It failed to realise the reply was an automatic out-of-office response. The email read, in Welsh: "I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated."

The bilingual sign was supposed to have read: "No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only." - as it did above in English. A Swansea Council spokesman said: "Our attention was drawn to the mistranslation of a sign at the junction of Clase Road and Pant-y-Blawd Road. We took it down as soon as we were made aware of it and a correct sign will be installed as soon as possible."

Welsh-language magazine Golwg printed photographs of the offending sign after the gaffe was pointed out by readers. Managing editor Dylan Iorwerth said: "We have been running pictures of this kind of thing 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. As in this case, there can be a terrible mistake."

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[eefanincan]

I'll think of that everytime I put on my Out of Office at work.

[luke]

[faceless]

ah, the power of translation!

[11antoniacourt]

how funny. Actually it's more pathetic than it is funny. But I learned that Poles are Ireland's largest immigrant population, just in case the subject ever comes up.

[faceless]

careful now, it's the second largest... British are probably the first.

[pirtybirdy]

[faceless]

haha yeah, I should have put a picture of Father Ted up for that post...

Careful now!