Swansea Council contacted its in-house translation service when designing a bilingual sign barring heavy goods vehicles from a road. But as the translator was not available, they received an automated e-mail response in Welsh saying: "I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated."

Unaware of the real meaning of the message, officials had it printed on the sign under the English, which correctly reads: "No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only." A Swansea Council spokesman said: "We took it down as soon as we were made aware of it and a correct sign will be installed as soon as possible."

Welsh-language magazine Golwg printed photographs of the offending sign after the gaffe was pointed out by readers. Managing editor Dylan Iorwerth said: "We have been running pictures of this kind of thing over the past few months.

"It's good that people want to have bilingual signs, but unfortunately they don't make sure someone with a real knowledge of Welsh checks the work through all the different stages. As in this case, there can be a terrible mistake."

Terrible is a bit strong. I mean, how many people died because they can't speak English as well?

Only having a Serbo-Croat dictionary didn't help.

The original was here