Thursday, November 13, 2008

Perils of translation

Got a kick out of this story from the Language Log (your one stop shop for grammar and linguistics posting). A sign was being posted: 'No Entry for Heavy Goods Vehicles. Residential site only'. But not everything went well.
the council emailed the English text to their Welsh translator, and gave the response to the sign painters. Unfortunately, according to the article, the response meant "I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated".
Picture at the link. They also provided a link to my favorite picture of 2008:

And while I'm at it, the FP Gal almost fell out of her seat laughing at this pic:

2 comments:

Kate said...

Well, doesn't everyone want sprinkles?

Hehehe!

Meigan said...

My cousin Stephanie's graduation cake said "Congratulations on your Stephanie".

I always think these pictures can't be true, but they are!