Lost in translation: Gardaí capture most unwanted award for phantom offender

PRAWO JAZDY – the name was a licence to bill the offender time and again for serial traffic offences.

A red rag to a bull, the bete noir of An Garda Síochána, he was the fugitive Polish driver who could not be captured by the long arm of the law despite being billed more than 50 times for traffic offences.

His unveiling garnered headlines the world over and yesterday earned An Garda Síochána the dubious honour of a global Ig Nobel Award.

At a ceremony in Harvard, the Boys in Blue were feted for their failure to cop that the name “Prawo Jazdy” was in fact the Polish translation of “driving licence”, and not the name of a Polish recidivist intent on torturing the traffic police.

Their award was the Ig Nobel Prize for Literature, the flip-side of the famous Nobel Awards, due to be announced next week.

In explaining their prize-winning selection, the judges said the award to Ireland’s police service was for “writing and presenting more than 50 traffic tickets to the most frequent driving offender in the country – Prawo Jazdy – whose name in Polish means ‘driving licence’.”

Speaking on behalf of all her fellow Polish licensed drivers, Karolina Lewestam, a Polish citizen who attended the ceremony, and who is holder of a Polish driver’s licence, expressed her good wishes to the Irish police service.

The embarrassing Garda error came into the public domain last February via a leaked memo after one officer noticed what had been lost in translation.

The memo stated: “Prawo Jazdy is actually the Polish for driving licence and not the first and surname on the licence.

“Having noticed this I decided to check on Pulse (the criminal data base) and see how many members have made this mistake.

“It is embarrassing that the system has created Prawo Jazdy as a person with over 50 identities.”

That embarrassment has now been enshrined in an award unlikely to be displayed on the mantle in Phoenix Park.

In all, 10 Ig Nobel prizes were awarded by the Annals of Improbable Research, a Harvard-based outfit intent on “celebrating the unusual and honouring the imaginative”.

The ceremony, now in its 19th year, took place on Thursday night and prizes were awarded by actual Nobel winners. The prizes are presented each year in early October for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think”.

The awards ceremony is traditionally closed with the words: “If you didn’t win a prize – and especially if you did – better luck next year!”