ASDA chiefs could be hitting the bottle after a hilarious blunder resulted in “alcohol free” being mistranslated into the Welsh for “free alcohol”.
A customer saw the bungled sign at a store in Cwmbran, Gwent, and posted a snap to social media with the caption: “They are giving away alcohol.”
Guto Aaron, a fluent Welsh speaker, quickly spotted that “Alcohol am Ddim” is an invitation, not to be healthy, but to cram your trolley and head for the exit.
Welsh-speaking social media users pointed out that Asda’s bilingual sign should have read “Di-alcohol”.
Guto’s full post read: “Get yourself to Asda.
“According to their dodgy Welsh translations they are giving away free alcohol! (If you can read the Welsh in that dark font that is).”
Menai Owen-Jones responded: “Advantages of speaking Welsh!”
Twitter user @WelshGirl1 wrote: “Let’s go while stocks last!”
And Graham Colley said: “Even as an early stage Duolingo Welsh learner, I can see that ‘alcohol for free’ is not the same as ‘alcohol free ‘…”
Gaynor Leonard took a slightly more sympathetic approach, writing: “At least they’re trying!”
Byron Huws said: “In this case just let them carry on… and demand your rights exactly as advertised!”
Twitter user @tortipede said: “Well, that’s an incentive to learn.”
An Asda spokesman said: ““We would like to thank our eagle eyed customers for spotting this mistake, we hold our hands up and will be changing the signs in our Cwmbran store straight away.”
The hilarious mistake is not the first translation gaffes made using the Welsh language.
Last year, a former council worker came forward as the individual responsible for a road sign near an Asda in Swansea which read “I am not in the office at the moment” when it should have said “No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only”.
Andy Kirby, from Ammanford, Carmarthenshire, said he mistook an automatic email reply from Welsh translators to be the appropriate wording when installing the sign ten years ago.
And in Scotland, attempts to provide signs in English and Gaelic have also resulted in hilarious blunders.
In 2015, Argyle and Bute Council commissioned a sign to greet visitors from the ferry.
But the phrase ‘Welcome to the beauty of the Isle of Bute’ was mistranslated into Gaelic as ‘Welcome to the Beauty of Penis Island’.
Asda’s Welsh language woes continued as they tried to apologise for the error in the same tongue.
A spokesman added the phrase “Mae’n ddrwg genni” to the original statement, meaning: ‘I’m sorry’.
Apparently realising a first person apology was inappropriate for a massive corporation, this was changed again to “Mae’n ddrwg gennym” which means ‘Sorry’.
