Intercultural Communication and Translation News

Council workers in Swansea erected a road sign informing motorists in Welsh: “I am out of the office at the moment”.

Swansea council staff were designing a bilingual road sign barring heavy goods vehicles from a street in the city and had consulted an in-house translation service.

As the translator was not available, an automatatic e-mail response was triggered in Welsh which read: “I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated.”

Staff mistakenly thought that it was the correct translation and had it printed on the sign beneath the message in English, which read: “No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only”.

Read more >> Welsh Sign

Companies setting up shop are forced to change their livery. Traffic lights are smashed in defiance. It seems astonishing that a town could detest something so much, but Larkhall does.

For it is green that provokes so much ire in this Lanarkshire town just outside Glasgow. Yes, the colour.

So far, the contempt with which the emerald tint is held in the town has prompted the sandwich chain Subway to change its traditional signage to black and the local pharmacies to switch their frontage to blue.

The reason is simple, if slightly strange, and stems from sectarianism and football rivalry. In Larkhall, green is immediately associated with Catholicism, Irish republicanism and the football team Glasgow Celtic. And in Larkhall, the vast majority of people proclaim themselves to be Protestant, unionist, and supporters of another Glasgow football team, Rangers.Read more >> Larkhall