US man self-owns with mistranslated “Blue Lives Matter” shirt

Normally, I’d say people who don’t speak a particular tongue should treat any tattoos or slogans written in that language with massive skepticism, especially if they do their own translation … but sometimes the results are too priceless to pass up. Here’s an American (given the context, he can’t be from anywhere else) trying to share a political message in Irish:

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As actual Irish linguist Audrey Nickel explains:

This pic came across my desk about nine months ago, and it may just be the worst example of a self-translation disaster I’ve ever seen.

In fact, it’s so bad, and so out of context, that most of my Irish-speaking friends had no idea what this person was trying to say with those three Irish words: “Gorm Chónaí Ábhar.” It’s beyond gibberish. It even took me a few minutes.

[…]

What this person was trying to say, with this mess of a translation on his t-shirt, is “Blue Lives Matter.”

Nickel reverse-engineers this trainwreck of a translation, which is entertaining (and enlightening!) enough in itself. But here’s the punchline:

At the end of the day, allowing for grammatical travesties (of which there are many) and horrendous word choices, what this person’s shirt says is “Black Lives Matter.”

The pictured twerp goes around bearing a contradiction to his stance on his back without even realizing it. That’s just too beautiful for words.

(via @Limerick1914; RT: @Popehat)