Free erections in Wales

Th paper language mistakes made on public signs in Wales on a cash withdrawal machine and at a supermarket parking lot. Both

1. Minority languages on public signs

Linguistic landscaping is a concept used in the study of sociolinguistics. It can be referred to as the use of different languages on public sings in different places or communities (van Herk, 2012).  the use of both a Dutch and English sentence in a public park, to make clear that it is not allowed to walk on the grass. The purpose of using multiple languages could be to make sure everyone understands, tourists often do not speak the official language of a country.

Linguistic landscaping is a very interesting domain of sociolinguistics. It looks at the actual use of language, in different settings. It cannot always be said that multiple languages are used only for tourists. Sometimes, mistakes are made or the language serves a different purpose. Perhaps a language is used to keep it from dying out, or to pay respect to the few people that still use a minority language.

Discovering why different languages are used on the same signs, who decided that one language was not enough and explaining the reasoning behind it can be very interesting.  this paper, we will be looking at two pictures, both taken in different cities in Wales. The pictures are taken from the internet, both from the news websites of BBC. The websites featured these signs, because the mistakes that were made turned out to be funny, and someone noticed them.

 why these mistakes were made is in need an analysis of the situation. Therefore, the research question of this paper is: Who were responsible for the mistakes that were made, and why were they allowed to happen? Figuring out how these mistakes came to be can tell us a lot about the reasoning two languages were used in the first place. Perhaps one language can be sufficient these days, or more has to be done to prevent mistakes.
2. Description of signs

2.1 Welsh in Aberystwyth

Figure 1 a sign from Aberystwyth, a town on the west coast of Wales (BBC Newsbeat, 2014). Two languages are used above the cash machine, which makes the sign bilingual. The bottom language is Standard English, and the one on is Welsh. The meaning of the English text is clear, you can withdraw cash from the machine.  Because we often expect things to make sense, we immediately assume that the Welsh sentence says the same, only in a different language.

If you however translate the Welsh text ‘codiad am ddim’, you will find that it translates roughly to ‘free erections’, instead of ‘free cash withdrawals’. This is of course extremely different from the meaning that can be expected. After doing some research, the correct translation was found. The mistake in ‘codiad am ddim’, is that ‘codiad’ means ‘erection’. The word that should have been used here is ‘codi’, which means ‘lift’. But even when this word is replaced, the sentence does not make sense. It should have been: ‘codi arian heb dâl’ which means: ‘lift money without fee’. This is almost a completely different sentence than the one that is used.

Figure 2 shows a public sign in a parking lot in Morriston, also a town in Wales (BBC NEWS South West Wales, 2014). The sign is property of a supermarket and was most likely meant to be in English and Welsh. The second word is clearly written in Standard English, but it is with the first word that problems arise. Since the sign is placed in a town in Wales, it can be expected that the language used is also Welsh. Only the top word ‘Parcadh’ is not a Welsh word, but a Scottish Gaelic word, also meaning ‘parking’. Scottish Gaelic is a language native to Scotland, descended from Irish (Gaelic Matters, n.d.). In this case, the meaning of the words on the signs are correct, but a completely different language is used, one that is not spoken in Wales.

Why Welsh

 The first question we need to ask ourselves, is why Welsh is even used on these signs. Wales as a country has 3,063 million . The main language spoken in Wales is English. The question is how many people speak Welsh. According to the Welsh government, in December 2015 only 27.3% of the Welsh citizens say they are able to speak Welsh. This is not an awful lot, and these numbers are decreasing every year. In 2001, 29.9% of the citizens could speak Welsh (Stats Wales, 2016).

The decrease of the number of people that speak Welsh is a problem for the Welsh government. The language is seen as a part of their culture, but is slowly being forgotten. The problem the government is facing here, is that they want to keep the language alive, but they also want to attract as many tourist as they can. Using Welsh as their standard language may keep a lot of tourist away, who do not understand Welsh (Wayfinding specialists, n.d.).

To deal with this problem, the Welsh Assembly created rules for the use of Welsh (Welsh Assembly Government, 2011). One of these rules includes language use on signs. According to the Welsh Language Scheme Documentation from the Welsh government, which tries to promote the use of Welsh in the country, newly made signs should always be bilingual. Existing signs do not have to be changed, but if they are replaced, a Welsh translation should be added. This counts only for signs placed by the government, shop owners for example are free in the choice of a bilingual sign. In short, the use of Welsh is promoted by using it in everyday life. This way, the government tries to treat the languages equally and keep the Welsh language alive.

Making mistakes

In Figure 1, a mistake was made with the translation of the sign. The question is why this mistake was made. It' is a curious mistake, since the translation that is used is partly right, and partly wrong. It does say that something is free, but it is not talking about cash withdrawals in this case.It can be argued that not a real translator was used. We can hopefully assume that someone who translates Welsh for a living would do it right. The question is then, whether no translator was used at all, or if an incapable one was used. When the sentence ‘free cash withdrawals’ is entered in a translation machine, the sentence you get is fairly different from the one that is used. Therefore, it makes the most sense that an incapable Welsh speaker was used, who did know a few Welsh words, but was not proficient enough to make a correct translation. 

In Figure 2, the translation that was used was correct, but the language was not. Scottish Gaelic was used instead of Welsh on the sign. The question is why nobody noticed that the wrong language was used before the sign was put up. In this case, the word that was used was ‘Parcadh’, while the word that should be used is ‘Parcio’. 

The question is whether Welsh and Scottish Gaelic are so much alike that the mistake could easily be made. Both languages are Celtic languages, which are mostly spoken on the north-western edge of Europe. But while Scottish Gaelic descends from Old Irish, Welsh descends from old Brittonic (Gaelic Matters, n.d.). So while all Celtic languages have some things in common, there are enough differences to be found. They both origin from the same form, but have developed for example a different spelling system through the ages.

Because the languages are so different, the most reasonable explanation is that the person that translated the sign spoke neither Welsh nor Scottish Gaelic, which made him incapable to see the difference. And apparently, nobody working at the supermarket that put up the sign spoke Welsh, otherwise they would have noticed the mistake.

Both of the mistakes can be seen as the result of incompetent translators, which could not see the mistakes that were made. Also, it is clear that neither of these signs were checked after the translation was added, which shows a lack of interest from the people that were responsible for them. This could of course be, because the people responsible for the sign did not speak Welsh, but if the goal of the bilingual signs is to keep the language alive, a bit more effort might be necessary.  Clearly none of the people involved in the making of the signs were proficient Welsh speakers, or they would have noticed the mistakes.

Conclusions

The mistake on the sign in Figure 1 was made due to an incapable translator, that was not proficient enough in Welsh to see the mistake. In Figure 2, the mistake is most likely a result of a translator that did not speak Welsh at all, or otherwise the mistake would have been easily noticed.

These mistakes are both similar in the way that the fault was not noticed until a passer-by pointed them out. This means that both signs were not checked before they were used, and no proficient Welsh speaker had seen them before they were put out in the world. This raises an interesting question, because if the Welsh government wants to keep the Welsh language alive, why did they not involve Welsh speakers in the construction of these signs?

Allowing these mistakes to happen shows, that while the government is trying to keep the language from dying, they are not very dedicated to the task. They obviously tried to make signs that used both Welsh and English, but they were not dedicated enough to use a translator that actually speaks Welsh.

Looking at these signs, it is clear that not enough effort went into creating them. Maybe the Welsh government should make a decision here: either every sign has to be bilingual and they have to be correct, or no sign should be. Mistakes like this seem funny, especially the one in Figure 1, but it is an insult to a language.

When trying to keep a language alive, it is not only important to use it publicly. People also have to be willing to learn the language. If both Welsh and English are used on a sign, there is no real encouragement to learn Welsh if you already speak English. So maybe these bilingual signs are more to honour the people that still speak Welsh, but not to keep the language alive. And if it is, these mistakes are even more unacceptable.

The main goal of this paper was to figure out who was responsible for the mistakes in the linguistic landscape in Wales, and why these mistakes were allowed to happen. It can be said that in these two cases, the Welsh government is indirectly responsible. Of course, the mistakes on the signs were made by sloppy translators nd lazy people who were supposed to check them. But in the end, it was the Welsh government that wanted these bilingual signs, but did not give any direction on how to make these correctly. If they had set rules, for example about using an ample translator, these mistakes could have easily been prevented.

The mistakes were allowed to happen because the government is probably not really dedicated to the task of keeping Welsh alive. Until clear rules are set for making public bilingual signs, these mistakes will still be made.

References

BBC Newsbeat. (2014, October 28). Tesco cash machine mistakenly promises free erections. 
BBC NEWS South West Wales. (2014, November 1). Asda uses Scottish Gaelic on English-Welsh store sign.
Gaelic Matters. (n.d.). The Celtic Language – the basics and what it sounds like. Consulted on 7 June 2016.
an Herk, G. (2012). What is Sociolinguistics? Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell
Stats Wales. (2016). Annual Population Survey estimates of persons aged 3 and over who say they can speak Welsh by local authority and measure.
Wayfinding specialists. (n.d.). Do Road Signs in Wales Have to Be in Welsh and English? Consulted on 7 June 2016. 
Welsh Assembly Government. (2011). Welsh Language Scheme 2011-2016.