The father of two, Neale Thomas, was to report vab, care of a sick child, to the Swedish Social Insurance Agency, but was met by, to say the least, odd wording when he clicked on translation into English via a service on the authority's website.

Why did you need a baby, which translated into Swedish becomes why did you have children, was one of the questions asked via the self-service form.

Neale Thomas says that at first he was surprised by the rather philosophical question, but that the answer options assured him that something had gone wrong.

Then the translated questions continued on the same comic track, including words like "babbling" and "wobbling".

Error with translation service

- There are many fun things on the internet, but when you are on a government website and they ask all these strange questions, it becomes very fun, says Neale Thomas.

Niklas Löfgren, family finance spokesperson at the Swedish Social Insurance Agency, believes that the Swedish Social Insurance Agency in this case did not try to be intentionally funny.

- This is an external translation service that does not really maintain the quality it should.

We do not have an English translation of the self-service services and then it has become these rather fun translations, he says.