Bad Gaelic Tattoo translations

[Finistere]

As a fluent Irish speaker, I have seen my share of bad translations and have had many requests -- usually from fellow Americans -- for tattoos in Irish. Worse than a bad tattoo, in my opinion, is when state services (Republic of Ireland) use Google Translate to provide documentation and support to the Irish speaking community instead of using actual Irish speakers.

Ádh mór a chairde,
Seanachán

I quite agree, Google translate is not the best tool for Celtic languages, I'm a Welsh speaker and Welsh mutates if your talking about yourself, your parents or grand parents, this is just one example there are many many more, Google translate can't do this as its a program, only a native speaker can do this. Kit

[OC Richard]

I did a thread a while back- I can't find it now- about how so many American Fire Department Pipe Bands have incorrect Gaelic slogans as part of their logos or what have you.

When I started playing in a Fire Department Pipe Band I did some research and reached out to Gaelic speakers here for help. I didn't want to commit the same errors!

It was quite a learning experience.

Here's the beginning of my thread on this topic, on another forum:

A student, who is a firefighter, had on his binder a fire logo that said onior do na mardh.

I said that it couldn't be spelt that way, as it violates Gaelic spelling conventions and besides there's no such word as "mardh".

Anyhow I got out both Irish and Scots Gaelic dictionaries and it seems that it should be onoir do na mairbh, "onoir" being, like English "honour", a borrowed French word, and "mairbh" the plural for dead.

[freep]

This a very famous sign in Wales, according to the news at the time, the message in Welsh emailed from the translation department reads "I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated."

When I had a gold necklace made for my wife in Saudi , in her name but in Arabic lettering, I very carefully translated via dictionary each letter onto a piece of paper so that when I went to collect it I knew exactly what it should look like, and it Did...

Swiped that pic and made a meme. Thanks.

[RectaPete]

My family don't come from Gaeltacht areas, and have not been speaking Irish at home since before the Famine. My grandmother went to an Irish-medium school where the nuns beat kids who were caught speaking English! I think those factors, as well as her moving to England, contributed to none of her children speaking it. I'm looking to get back to my roots and learn a bit of Irish (and possibly Scots Gaelic), but as a native speaker of English the grammar mutations are a bit too much for me at the moment... considering I speak and write Japanese with some proficency that's saying something!

[O'Callaghan]

My family once came from the Irish town of Cobh in the county of Cork, which of course is Corcaigh in Gaelige. That is odd enough in itself, using the Irish name Cobh for the town, as the use of Irish was already extinct in that area when the town was founded in 1725, but never mind. I certainly understand why they wouldn't want to call it Queenstown, albeit the Cove of Cork, in English, was the original name.

I could cite many examples of bad translations, but I will stick to something I saw myself. It was a Suzuki motorcycle in London. Someone had painted the name Suzuki on the tank, but done it in Runes, not in Japanese script. That, by itself, would be fine, but they had used late period Norse Runes, which only have 16 letters. English was originally written in Anglo-Friesian runes, which had 32 letters, and both derive from Germanic Runes (I think those actually used 26 letters?). People used to think the Norse version was the original, because those inscriptions were found first by modern archeologists, but in fact that is not the case. Perhaps I am being pedantic, but what does a Japanese motorcycle in England have to do with Norse? Perhaps the owner's name was Sven?

[freep]

<snip> Perhaps I am being pedantic, but what does a Japanese motorcycle in England have to do with Norse? <snip>

Well I don't know about Zooks, but I have a Honda Valkyrie. . .