This one comes straight from Wales, through the BBC.
It looks like an innocent street sign, and it is, in English. The problem is that in Wales all street signs must also be displayed in the local language and for that you need a translator. Unfortunately, when consulted for this sign, the translator was out of his office and his automatic reply was used as the actual translation. This is (more or less) what the sign actually says:
I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated.
I find this even better than Parfaitment con :P
Call me a nitpicker or make fun of me because I speak several languages, but I cannot help to notice when people are not careful about translations. In the last few days I've come across a couple of examples.
The first one comes from a famous coffee-shop which I will not name (maybe the patent number will help you figure it out):
I guess you have to speak French to understand in that in the first paragraph they're actually talking about "This insolent sleeve (...)".
The second one was spotted at the Musée du Quai Branly. I put the three versions of one of their interactive screen together, in order from top to bottom there's Spanish, French and English:
Having translated for a living, I know that literal translation is not always the best solution and that sometimes interpretation is better, that's why I have nothing to say when "Interview" in English becomes "Récit" in French (or most probably, the other way around), but I do have an issue with making up useless words and "Intervista" really does fall into that category, because the perfectly good word "Entrevista" already exists in Spanish.
What makes these errors so remarkable, in my opinion, is that anybody with access to an online translator (Live Translator is currently my favorite) could have avoided these mistakes. Why not a professional?
This one comes straight from Wales, through the BBC.
