Council bosses slated for flood of errors on sea defence plaque
RED-FACED council chiefs will remove a slate plaque from a newlybuilt wall to correct several mistakes.
Work on the wall at Borth y Gest near Porthmadog, a picturesque seaside village, is nearing completion.
It is part of a flood defence scheme and three informative slate plaques have been put in place along the top of the structure.
While there are no issues with two of the plaques, one of them contains “several glaring mistakes” in both Welsh and English.
Sharp-eyed walkers spotted the word grasses had been misspelled in English, and there was a grammatical mistake in the Welsh phrase at the top of the plaque.
“In this instance Borth y Gest would mutate into ‘ym Mhorth y Gest,” Welsh college lecturer Diana Parry, from Machynlleth, said.
She added some of the Welsh words had been mistranslated.
“Marram grass in Welsh is moresg and not Glaswellt y Tywod. That’s a new one on me.
“And the word for Ash tree has been literally translated as Coeden Lludw which is just wrong. It should be Onnen as it always has been in Welsh,” she said.
The mistakes have been spotted by others who have been quick to comment on social media.
John Roberts said: “Why pay to translate? Google does so for free.”
Rhian Cadwaladr said the translations were “disrespectful”.
“Why does this happen so often?” she added. And social media user Ann Beynon described the plaque’s mistakes as “sad and unnecessary”.
In response a Gwynedd council spokesman said: “New information panels have recently been installed in Borth y Gest as part of a flood defence project.
“As soon as we became aware of some errors in the text on the panels, arrangements were made to temporarily remove them so that any mistakes can be remedied as soon as possible.”