No 31 in this New York Times collection of strange street signs.
My impression is that the Chinese are ahead, but it seems hard to criticise them for this: huge efforts have been made over the past decade to make a previously sternly monolingual country more accessible to foreigners; the effort is laudable and the meaning usually clear.
It is harder to defend Spain, which has had mass Anglo tourism and immigration for a long time but failed to respond adequately. This effort by Granada Council is a bit sad–you know what they mean, and if they’d gone into a tourist bar they could have had it corrected for free. However, Granada is still way ahead of places like Ripoll, which houses one of the marvels of Iberian Romanesque but doesn’t think it worth advertising that fact in any but the local language.
No translation: no mistakes, but less tourists too. “Wher herte is failed,/Ther schal no castell ben assailed,” but you’ve got to wonder in cases like Ripoll whether the heart is even willing.
Similar posts
Back soon
I worked at a hotel reception some years ago. One day I took down a brief announcement from the wall to correct its English. Comment of the head receptionist: "Don't bother, people will understand it anyway."
The town where this happened was celebrating that same year "50 years of foreign tourism". It was a town in Spain.