“May the space between where I am and where I want to be inspire me.”
— Tracee Ellis Ross
I'm learning that I'm not scared of failing, I'm scared of not trying.
''closed for cleaning on mondays'' comes from a sign, right? where it had been like written in English first and then a translation request sent to some office for the Welsh part and the autoreply came back saying the closed for cleaning bit but it's in Welsh so the people sending the request think it's the text they wanted translated, so then the road sign reads like:
''[Closed for cleaning on Mondays, but in Welsh] // Llanfainpwllgwyngyll Regional Airport 5 km"
i thought I remembered some kind of story like that......
…this is a highly surreal ask to receive and I lowkey cannot work out if you Know and are baiting me or if the stars have just aligned weirdly that I am being asked this.
Okay so no, “Closed for cleaning on Mondays” is just an isolated joke by itself, thrown out because it’s funny to think of a country being closed for cleaning. HOWEVER. I do know exactly what you’re vaguely remembering (or possibly fully remembering and gleefully pretending otherwise *sus*).
A new road was built near a supermarket in Swansea into a residential area in 2008, so they needed a road sign to tell delivery lorries not to enter the road. Someone in the roads section of Swansea Council duly sent the sign text (“No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only”) to be translated to their internal translation department.
What they got back was an email that said:
Nid wyf yn y swyddfa ar hyn o bryd. Anfonwch unrhyw iaith i'w gyfieithu i EMAIL ADDRESS os gwelwch yn dda.
I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated to EMAIL ADDRESS.
At which point, the galaxy-brained individual who received that response went “Ah, excellent, my translation - WAIT. Something is Wrong with this translation.”
And he looked at it, and examined it, and pondered it, and then went: “Hang on. My text didn’t have an email address in it.”
And he looked at it again, and examined it again, and pondered it again, and then went: “Hang on. I remember from school that ‘Os gwelwch yn dda” means 'please’. My text didn’t have the word please in it.“
And he looked at it a final time, and examined it a final time, and pondered it a final time, and then went: "I have solved the mystery here. The translator is Wrong. I just need to remove that email address and 'please’ and then it’ll say what I want.”
And that got picked up by Welsh media, and then UK media, and then international media, and even the New York Times or some shit reported it, and then MASSIVE FUCKING SCRUTINY descended upon, not the roads department of Swansea council who were actually responsible, but the translation department of Swansea Council, because this was considered Proof that we shouldn’t have to put Welsh on road signs and we should all just let Welsh die.
And THAT meant the translators working for Swansea Council suddenly had to go through their out-of-office emails to prove that they’re nice and clear and easy to understand and this wasn’t their fault.
And one of those poor hapless translators, whose out-of-office email was suddenly being scrutinised by the New York Times as potential evidence that his job shouldn’t exist and his language should be wiped out…
