SINGAPORE - A wet market operator whose flyers drew flak for having a Hindi translation instead of a Tamil one has expressed remorse over his mistake and intends to print apology letters, which will be displayed publicly.
The four official languages of Singapore are listed in the constitution as Malay, Mandarin, Tamil and English.MP for Sembawang GRC Vikram Nair told The Straits Times that the flyers were put up by an independent wet market operator, who had not consulted any MPs or the town council before printing them.He added that the"well-meaning" operator had tried to print the flyers to promote the new location of the wet market.
The 33-year-old, who is a spokesman for Admiralty Wet Market, said:"It was a bad mistake on our part, there are really no excuses." Initially, the team had planned to print the flyers in English, but were concerned that some elderly residents in the area might not understand the language.However, Mr Neo and his team used Google Translate to produce the translations, leading to the poorly translated Malay section.He admitted that if his team had consulted the MPs prior to printing the flyers, things might have turned out differently.