By now you would have heard about the spectacular fail by the government's Speak Mandarin Campaign, where the wrong Chinese character for the word "Read" was used, and then widely mocked on social media.

And it has also emerged that in yet another instance, the second in two days, the organisers for this year's National Day Parade bungled the Tamil translation of its tagline on a series of pamphlets.

These brochures were distributed to Primary 5 students from 162 primary schools — if you recall, it's the P5 kids who attend the annual National Education (NE) show, one of the NDP previews.

Here's the leaflet with the ridiculously wrong incorrect translation:

In case you can't see the post, here's the picture of the leaflet:

A mistake in every. single. word.

The right translation would have been along the lines of "ஒரே தேசமாக ஒன்று சேருவோம்", which transliterates to orei deisamaga ondru seiruvom, meaning "Let's come together as one nation".

Even if you may not understand Tamil, comparing the correct translation to the wrongly printed one will show you that there are numerous missing and misplaced letters in the version printed by NDP.

Now, it's possible that the typist messed up the input of the letters, resulting in a series of bad typos.

For example, the last word's mistake lies in the process of making the letter ரு (ru).

To get that letter, one needs to combine the consonant ர் (pronounced as r)  with the vowel உ (pronounced like a short 'u').

For some reason, however,  ர் appeared on its own, turning the last word into one that is pretty much unintelligible.

And as if we even need to say this, such a mistake should not, under any circumstances, be brushed aside.

Here's something that makes this even more embarrassing (just when you thought that wouldn't be possible): in January this year, a Review Panel on Government Tamil Translation was set up after a series of previous completely careless mistakes in Tamil translations by the government.

Did you know, for instance, that the Tamil translation for Tan Kah Kee MRT station was "paan kah kee"? Also, the phrase "senior citizen concession card" was translated to "expired senior kissing generation concession card".

We cannot forget that Tamil, along with Malay, Mandarin and English, is one of our four official languages.

Proper vetting of the language will not only help to reduce embarrassing mistakes such as these, but also show a certain level of respect and care for our Tamil-speaking community.

And we can't believe we had to say that.

Top image via Thamil Selvan's Facebook post