I wonder if anyone has thought to make a site similar to this:

http://engrish.com/

for Irish. Granted, there are fewer t-shirts floating around with egregious errors, but I'm sure it could be done with screenshots of webpages and blogs (and clothing, when applicable) with nonsensical errors in Irish.

So, do you think there's enough stuff out there to run a site and take submissions...purely for amusement, that is?

Antaine

I love seeing these types of things. The problem you have is that the stuff you see like this is mostly from the far east. You never see anything in Europe. Sure, you might find some incorrect translations on the web but in my opinion you will be very hard pressed to find anything like this where the translations are so bad, the majority if not all of the bilingual Irish/English you see is within Ireland.

Damian

I've seen stuff not only from South America, but also Eastern Europe (southeast of Czech Republic) - but you're right, most are from the far east.

And while it's true that the Irish is mostly in Ireland (and a bit in the US), I think it may also be reasonable that many of those putting together signage and websites are far from fluent themselves (like this Welsh example: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/7702913.stm )

There's actually a flickr pool for Welsh examples, which go under the colloquial name of "Scymraeg" (a portmanteau of English scum and Welsh Cymraeg "Welsh language"): http://www.flickr.com/groups/scymraeg/pool/. Unfortunately there are no explanations for non-Welsh-speakers, but if anyone had questions about these or other examples, I'll do my best.

So far my pet example is a traffic sign which says "Pedestrians look right" in English and "Cerddwyr edrychwch i'r chwith" ("Pedestrians look left") in Welsh. (A clever attempt to steer Saeson into oncoming traffic? Alas, the English version is the correct one.)

Oh, and there's certainly no shortage of scrambled English in Central Europe. My favourite recent example is a mailer produced by Deutsche Post with the jaw-dropping name of "Come-Bag".

Is dócha go bhféadfainn an scéal faoi chonradh gnó éigin a síníodh sa tSín agus a aistríodh go Béarla. Cáipéis toirtiúil. Nuair a shroich an t-aistriúchán Baile Átha Cliath b'éigean duillín a ghreamú den leathanach tosaigh: "For sliding doors read zip fasteners."

You could fill a site like that with Irish road and streetname signs.

Just today I saw "Toc agus Taispeáin" on a parking ticket dispenser. I was bewildered for a second until I realised some imbecile had mistaken an i fada for a T :)

Years ago, I saw a sign in a railway station concourse in western France (perhaps Le Mans) the English vesion of which read, "Please do not spit out your chewing gum on the floor"!

About 12 years ago in Waterstones' bookshop in Dublin I saw the following bilingual sign planted over a magazine stand: [Magazines / Armlanna].

Enough to make one reach for one's gun.

[Magazines / Armlanna].

Enough to make one reach for one's gun.

Good one.

Well now that France got pulled in... Finns too have their share of "Finkish", perhaps, where Turkish and other "relatively near east" people come up with strange spellings.

Special offer ad taped to the window of a pizza/kebab booth (this was in my town):
"Normali kikku ja tomatti 5€".
It would be much better "Normaali kinkku ja tomaatti..." (normal pork and tomato). It would be disturbing to find what "kikku" sounds like in a pizza.

And that's mo chuid of non-Irish-related postings today. I hope.