High-profile translation gone wrong: The BBC News website today carries the sorry tale of a road sign that carries an embarrassing mistake. Road signs in Wales are bilingual, in English and Welsh. And one local authority sent an email to their own in-house translation department, asking for a translation of the text on a road sign. What came back was an automated email, in Welsh, saying "Nid wyf yn y swyddfa ar hyn o bryd. Anfonwch unrhyw waith i'w gyfieithu" - or, if you prefer an English translation: "I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated."
Unfortunately, the official requesting the translation did not read Welsh, did not realise that this reply was not in fact a translation of their road sign.... and duly had the sign made. You can see the end result here - a road sign that bans trucks from using the road in English, and in Welsh says "I'm not here, send me an email". Oh dear!
The moral? Good communication is crucial when buying a translation, and that also means dealing with a translation company with project managers who have good communication skills.
If you are buying translations to go on signs, or for a full-page advert, or for box copy, then the potential for red faces if things go wrong is immense, and unlikely to be career-enhancing. Perhaps not the best time to be looking for a cheap quote?
And a footnote to this post:
Libby Purves comments on this Welsh translation issue in The Times, and she also addresses another of my favourite hobby-horses: automatic translation. Libby fed this English sentence into an online translation engine, then fed the Welsh through, and ended up with an English sentence that read: "I do entry because heartburn drum good vehicles. residential position except". Say what?!?!? The original English had been: "I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated."
Moral: If you have high-profile materials to be translated (by which I mean you are putting the text on a sign, using it in an advert in a magazine or newspaper, or having it client-facing in any way at all) then get it done by a professional, qualified, experienced translator.
Unfortunately, the official requesting the translation did not read Welsh, did not realise that this reply was not in fact a translation of their road sign.... and duly had the sign made. You can see the end result here - a road sign that bans trucks from using the road in English, and in Welsh says "I'm not here, send me an email". Oh dear!
The moral? Good communication is crucial when buying a translation, and that also means dealing with a translation company with project managers who have good communication skills.
If you are buying translations to go on signs, or for a full-page advert, or for box copy, then the potential for red faces if things go wrong is immense, and unlikely to be career-enhancing. Perhaps not the best time to be looking for a cheap quote?
And a footnote to this post:
Libby Purves comments on this Welsh translation issue in The Times, and she also addresses another of my favourite hobby-horses: automatic translation. Libby fed this English sentence into an online translation engine, then fed the Welsh through, and ended up with an English sentence that read: "I do entry because heartburn drum good vehicles. residential position except". Say what?!?!? The original English had been: "I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated."
Moral: If you have high-profile materials to be translated (by which I mean you are putting the text on a sign, using it in an advert in a magazine or newspaper, or having it client-facing in any way at all) then get it done by a professional, qualified, experienced translator.
posted by Nick at 7:38 PM
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