
E-mail error ends up on road sign - epi0Bauqu
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/7702913.stm
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jcl
"It's good to see people trying to translate, but they should really ask for
expert help."

The sad thing is: they _did_ ask for expert help, and this is what it got
them.

~~~
cstejerean
That's what happens when you ask for things you don't understand and you trust
the answer from just one person.

~~~
notauser
If I wrote my out of office message in Lisp I'm not sure I would be able to
blame someone else for any resulting screw ups.

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mhartl
No idea if the translation here is right, but it's sufficient for a sanity
check:

[http://www.tranexp.com:2000/InterTran?url=http%3A%2F%2F&...](http://www.tranexp.com:2000/InterTran?url=http%3A%2F%2F&type=text&text=No+entry+for+heavy+goods+vehicles.+Residential+site+only.&from=eng&to=wel)

~~~
palish
I prefer sanity checking the translator by reverse-translating his output:

 _Nid wyf yn y swyddfa ar hyn o bryd. Anfonwch unrhyw waith i'w gyfieithu._

 _Bit I am being crookedly the office at this time. You send any time I w
translate._

That would give me pause before I painted it onto my street sign.

~~~
mhartl
That's an even better idea.

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dougp
If they used xml this wouldn't have happened

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rokhayakebe
Although it is a bit different, this shows you should proofread your email
before you hit SEND.

~~~
silentbicycle
This is irrelevant - it was an email auto-responder.

Maybe a better observation is that if you're the only person in a company that
can read/write a language, _don't write your auto-respond message in it_.

~~~
hugh
I'm guessing that the auto-respond was written in both languages, but somebody
forgot to read the English bit and just copied down the bit that looked Welsh.

Of course, if these people were rational they might take a step back at this
point and say "If Welsh-speaking skills are so rare here in Wales that this
kind of thing can happen, why are we bothering to translate everything into
Welsh?"

~~~
silentbicycle
I think it's because they're politically pressured to; there are cultural
groups trying to keep the Welsh language from dying out. (I don't know Welsh
or live in the UK, though, so I'm going to defer to anybody who knows better.)

