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Jul 25, 2012 

London shopping centre in translation gaffe

Source: BBC

Story flagged by Peter Shortall

London 2012: Westfield Arabic banners ‘incoherent’

A London shopping centre has created Arabic signs that are “completely incoherent” to speakers of the language, a cultural organisation said.

Westfield Stratford is displaying huge banners welcoming visitors from all over the world for the Olympics.

The Council for Arab-British Understanding (Caabu) said the words were back to front and not joined up as they must be in Arabic. (…)

Westfield Stratford’s error appeared on welcome banners and on staff T-shirts. More.

See: BBC




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London shopping centre in translation gaffe
liz askew  Identity Verified
Royaume-Uni
Local time: 16:40
Membre (2007)
français vers anglais
+ ...
Machine translation? Jul 25, 2012

I wouldn't be surprised. I bet there are loads of translation gaffes during this period.

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esperantisto  Identity Verified
Local time: 18:40
Membre (2006)
anglais vers russe
+ ...
Not necessarily Jul 26, 2012

Not necessarily machine translation. They must’ve used a program incapable of properly rendering the Arab script to print out the banners.

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Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Pays-Bas
Local time: 17:40
Membre (2006)
anglais vers afrikaans
+ ...
Same thing happened elsewhere Jul 26, 2012

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-18911599

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Annelise Brincker  Identity Verified

Local time: 17:40
Membre (2012)
anglais vers danois
+ ...
Also in Denmark Jul 26, 2012

And here in Denmark a classic is the camping site that had just installed new toilets and advertised their "delicious handicapfriendly toilets". Bon appetit!

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