Belarusian customs declaration contains 46 mistakes (photo)
The Supreme Court cancelled the decision of Homel Central District Court to fine a Homel inhabitant Syarhei Syamyonau for 930 thousand BRB. Syarhei refused to fill in a declaration in Russian and demanded a Belarusian version of the document.
МеSyarhei Syamyonau was crossing the Ukrainian-Belarusian border again on November 17. He was immediately given a Belarusian declaration, BUT:
“It looks like a normal declaration but it is in Belarusian. But it is written “witnesses of goods” and there are no U’s short in it. I think the U short was not found on their PC because they added the breve in pencil”.
ERB journalists have found the new Belarusian declaration. The number of mistakes in it is enough to set a record – we have found 46. How many can you find? Look through the document!
The press service of the Customs committee did not explain who had translated the text of the declaration. It was said that that person was on a business trip in Moscow. By the way, the Belarusian Language Association has offered officials its help in translation many times.
ERB’S SPELL-CHECKING
The most common mistake was wrong usage of “U short”.
The word “u’ezd” is used several times instead of “uezd” (entrance). The translator probably drew an analogy with Russian where the hard sign is used after “v” but you cannot use an apostrophe after vowels in Belarusian.
“Kampetychnyya” (competent) organizations and “drukarnyya” (printed) editions. Neither of the words exists in Belarusian.
Words that the translator did not understand are used rather often. For example: news about luggage, news about goods or witnesses of goods. You can only guess what they mean.
The words “pribyu” (arrived) is written with a Russian “i” despite of the fact that the sound “r” is always hard in Belarusian. Probably the unknown translator tried to depict the Belarusian-Russian unity like that?
There were a lot of syntactical mistakes too. The author even forgot what he had written at the beginning of a sentence once (other mistakes can be found there too). At the same time I know that presenting inaccurate information in a customs declaration makes you account for it according to existing laws.
Click on photos for more mistakes.
МеSyarhei Syamyonau was crossing the Ukrainian-Belarusian border again on November 17. He was immediately given a Belarusian declaration, BUT:
“It looks like a normal declaration but it is in Belarusian. But it is written “witnesses of goods” and there are no U’s short in it. I think the U short was not found on their PC because they added the breve in pencil”.
ERB journalists have found the new Belarusian declaration. The number of mistakes in it is enough to set a record – we have found 46. How many can you find? Look through the document!
The press service of the Customs committee did not explain who had translated the text of the declaration. It was said that that person was on a business trip in Moscow. By the way, the Belarusian Language Association has offered officials its help in translation many times.
ERB’S SPELL-CHECKING
The most common mistake was wrong usage of “U short”.
The word “u’ezd” is used several times instead of “uezd” (entrance). The translator probably drew an analogy with Russian where the hard sign is used after “v” but you cannot use an apostrophe after vowels in Belarusian.
“Kampetychnyya” (competent) organizations and “drukarnyya” (printed) editions. Neither of the words exists in Belarusian.
Words that the translator did not understand are used rather often. For example: news about luggage, news about goods or witnesses of goods. You can only guess what they mean.
The words “pribyu” (arrived) is written with a Russian “i” despite of the fact that the sound “r” is always hard in Belarusian. Probably the unknown translator tried to depict the Belarusian-Russian unity like that?
There were a lot of syntactical mistakes too. The author even forgot what he had written at the beginning of a sentence once (other mistakes can be found there too). At the same time I know that presenting inaccurate information in a customs declaration makes you account for it according to existing laws.
Click on photos for more mistakes.
