Jun 28 2010
Email Auto-Reply Horror Stories
A common complaint about email as a medium is that it is often difficult to tell when someone is using sarcasm or trying to relay emotion. An added difficulty is when language and word usage is different between the sender and recipient. I recently came upon an article from the BBC that takes this concept to the extreme, thanks to a miscommunication caused by an email auto-response.
In this case, there was a road sign in Wales that needed to be written in both English and in Welsh. The sign maker got the English part right, but the Welsh part… well, maybe not so much.
The Welsh translation of the image above is, “I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated.”
Apparently, the official charged with creating the sign emailed a translator asking for the proper Welsh translation. When the translator’s out-of-office auto-reply message came back in Welsh, the sign maker assumed that the auto-reply was the actual translation. Alas, somewhere in Wales an automatic out of office message is now on a road sign.
I saw a number of signs in both languages when we were in Wales and in Ireland. I actually wondered if the Gaelic said the same thing as the English…