A flyer calling out a resident at a Tampines block for dumping garbage at a common area has gone viral thanks to the outrageous translation and grammatical errors in all three languages the flyer features.
The English translation seems to be the best, with just one error where “dump” is written as “dum,” but the Mandarin and Malay translations don’t fare as well. The irate resident’s Mandarin text actually translates to:
A 7th-storey selfish resident (owner who looks like cat) always at public area’s their rubbish.
The Malay text when translated appears to hilariously call out a “cat driver”:
The entry of customers (cat driver) overseas 7 always but their garbage in area or.
Interestingly, there was no Tamil translation in the flyer.
Tampines Town Council has disclaimed responsibility for the flyer which was posted on of the Council’s official notice boards. Member of Parliament for Tampines GRC, Baey Yam Keng, said:
“Tampines Town Council installed notice holders in our lifts to notify residents of important news pertaining to the estate. Recently, an unauthorised notice was found placed in the notice holder at Blk 299A. We would like to remind residents the notice holders are not meant for personal use. We will follow up with the littering problem highlighted by this resident.”
Tampines Town Council installed notice holders in our lifts to notify residents of important news pertaining to the…
Posted by Baey Yam Keng 马炎庆 on Thursday, 10 August 2017
The last time a flyer at a town council notice board came under fire was when Marine Parade GRC put up a notice that showed that the supervisor and the cleaner of the town council are the same person.
Ownself check Ownself
Posted by Teo Hong on Saturday, 8 July 2017
Marine Parade Town Council later admitted that the cleaner is his own supervisor, before calling the man “an unsung hero” in an attempt to spin the gaffe into a PR win.
The incident gave rise to more “ownself check ownself” memes, with Netflix Singapore capitalising on the Town Council’s blunder with a series a promotional ads featuring it’s most popular television series.
https://theindependent.sg.sg/netflix-pokes-fun-at-marine-parade-town-council-with-cheeky-ownself-clear-ownself-ads/