Olympics rail security poster gaffe as Arabic version 'gibberish'

Updated
Olympics rail security poster gaffe as Arabic version 'gibberish'
Olympics rail security poster gaffe as Arabic version 'gibberish'

PA


A train company has been blasted for producing an Olympics security poster that reads as "gibberish" in Arabic.

First Capital Connect placed posters at 13 stations printed in English as well as seven other languages.

But the Council for Arab-British Understanding called the Arabic lettering used "ridiculous" and basically unreadable as the characters are not joined up and are back to front.

The posters were created to warn people not to leave items unattended, and have been displayed at a number of main stations, including King's Cross, City Thameslink, St Pancras International, Luton and Stevenage.

The director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, Chris Doyle, told the BBC: "A first week Arabic speaker would not concoct that.

"It's sloppy. If they don't take remedial action there will be lots of Arabic speakers who will say 'What a farce'.

"It doesn't reflect brilliantly on London and looks frankly incompetent. It's ridiculous"

And Mustafa Kadhum, the BBC's Arabic Online news editor, explained: "Arabic words and sentences are written and read from right to left and Arabic words are always written with joined up letters, with some exceptions."

A spokesman for First Capital Connect told the site the company had used a professional translator, but that "our supplier substituted one font for another so that the wrong alphabet was used for the Arabic message, rendering it meaningless."

He added that the company were in the process of replacing the posters.

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