Swansea's Funniest Road Sign 😄

Good morning, Swansea!

Picture this: you're a Swansea Council worker and you need a Welsh translation for a road sign, so you email the council's in-house translation service. You get a reply back in Welsh, pop it straight onto the sign, and job done.

Except what if that wasn't actually a translation at all?

Back in 2008, one local council worker found out the hard way when his road sign ended up making national headlines for all the wrong reasons.

Catch you on Sunday!

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Lost in Translation

This story’s unfortunate star is Andy Kirby, the man who accidentally put Swansea on the world map. He was working as a contracts manager for the council's highways department when he needed a simple bilingual sign for near the Asda supermarket in Llansamlet.

The English was straightforward enough: "No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only." Following council policy, Andy fired off an email to the Welsh translation unit and waited for the response.

"I didn't usually get involved in designing signs as this was a one-off," Andy said. "I put in a request with the Welsh translation unit at Swansea Council and they sent me an email back with the Welsh in it which I thought was the translation."

What actually came back was this: "Nid wyf yn y swyddfa ar hyn o bryd. Afonwch unrhyw waith i'w gyfieithu."

Which translates to: "I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated."

Andy, none the wiser, had the sign made by a firm in Birmingham and got it installed. Then he went on his holidays to Spain.

"When I came back I heard rumours about a Welsh translation on a sign in Swansea being incorrect," he told WalesOnline. "I went to look at it with a colleague who spoke Welsh and when he looked at it he just burst out laughing."

"That made me think 'hello, we're in trouble here'. It was either incredibly funny or incredibly incompetent."

Andy quickly took the sign down, hoping nobody else would notice his blunder, but he very quickly realised that wasn’t going to be the case.

"It was Halloween night and me and my wife were in a hotel in Llandeilo enjoying a glass of wine with the television on in the background. The 10 o'clock news was on and they showed my sign as the last segment. I nearly died."

The story had gone global, with outlets including The Guardian and the BBC picking it up. Andy, who'd lived in Wales for 38 years after moving from Preston, suddenly found himself at the centre of an international comedy moment.

"I almost got sacked over it but they disciplined me and told me not to do it again, and I never did it again."

But his colleagues had the last laugh. When Andy retired in 2015, they presented him with a miniature replica of the infamous sign as his leaving gift.

"It was my claim to fame," he said. "My Andy Warhol moment."

Andy's not alone in Swansea's translation hall of fame. Fast forward to 2023, and the city was back making headlines twice in two months.

First, Tesco managed to confuse squash the drink with squash the sport, labeling their drinks aisle "Sboncen" (the racket game) instead of "Diod Ffrwythau" (the actual drink).

Then in April, gas workers repainting road markings outside Llangyfelach Primary School managed to spell "school" as "shcool." The Welsh underneath wasn't much better - "ysool" instead of "ysgol."

It seems Swansea’s got a talent for turning simple translations into comedy gold. And if you’re out there, Andy… apologies for resurfacing the story again (but it’s still pretty hilarious).

Catch you on Sunday!

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Sources

• BBC News: Swansea as workers misspell school when repainting road

• The Guardian: Lost in translation: road sign carries email reply

• ITV News: Tesco apologies for Welsh mistranslation of squash at one of its Swansea stores

• WalesOnline: The man responsible for the most infamously bad Welsh road sign transation