The notoriously hilarious website Signspotting has just relaunched, featuring even more photos of ridiculous Chinglish, poorly worded bathroom placards and unfortunately named restaurants. (Dinner at Phat Phuc Noodle Bar, anyone?) The revamped site now lets you rate every sign, making it into a veritable Hot or Not for semioticians.
It can also net you some travel cash. Every week, site photo editor Doug Lansky sifts through dozens of entries to pick the best sign and pays the photographer $50, just like that. Really awesome signs can even earn round-the-world tickets on Star Alliance; so far six have been awarded and Lansky hopes to hand out another next month.
In the meantime, he's organizing an exhibition in Stockholm of some of the best Signspotting has to offer. The outdoor show in Kungsträdgården Park runs July 5-20.
No Italian prostitutes fell victim to hit and run accidents this week in Treviso and we owe it all to clearly marked road signs. But not so clear is the neon sign atop a warehouse just past prostitue alley. It simply reads F.A.R.T. Spa.
Neither a day spa nor a place that freely promotes flatulence, the dingy building actually houses Europe's leading manufacturer of transformers for neon technology.
F.A.R.T. (Fabbrica Apparecchiature Radioelettriche Treviso), has posted the secret to its international success on its website: It's a combo of a family-owned "special formula" and "patented vacuum sealing system." Heh.
Il Terraglio is the stretch of road between the Province of Venice and the uber conservative city of Treviso. By day the road is seemingly unassuming, lined with your typical Italian trattorie, coffee shops, and villas. But by night it's a sexed-up superhighway filled with prositutes.
On a recent drive back from Venice we counted thirty-five in a 2-mile radius at which point we felt slightly violated for even being on the same pavement, not to mention they were getting picked up left and right. Eww. Suddenly there it was, this salty sign provocatively posted along the street. In English it says, WATCH OUT FOR PROSTITUTES.
The Viennese don't mess around. It must be a Germanic thing. You know, efficiency and organization.
As a result, the U-Bahn in Vienna runs pretty much like clockwork. Similarly, the signage on the trains doesn't miss a beat or leave any room for misunderstanding. Seen above (and snapped by us), the pictures indicate that you should give up the specified seats to the pregnant, those with small children, the disabled, and the elderly.
And just in case you have any question about what constitutes disability, they've come up with a handy universal symbol for it. Not only is the gentleman in blue blind, but he's got one bad hip and an armband that seems to indicate he's radioactive, too.
Talk about a lost cause. English is being corrupted the world over--did you know that millions of Germans think that a "handy" is the equivalent of a cell-phone, and that we use the phrase "you can reach me on my handy"?--and now the Chinese government has finally decided to fix up their English before the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Chinglish, their often comical mix of English and high imagination, has to go, they say.
Do we want this? Maybe it's OK to read an emergency exit sign (at Beijing Airport, no less) saying "No entry on peacetime". Or a warning for a slippery sidewalk that reads "To Take Notice of Safe; The Slippery are Very Crafty". Isn't this part of the fun of traveling in China? We say, long live the Chinglish, and we just need a friendly publisher to issue the Chinglish/English dictionary and we can travel both safely and with entertainment.
Now this is cool. A PDA-type device called the Sign Translator, which is now a reality, at least as a prototype, can take a picture of a sign in Chinese, recognize the characters, and then provide a translation into English. It's been developed by engineers at Karlsruhe University, in Germany. No word on how much it'll cost, when it's coming to market, anything like that. We can hardly wait for Sign Translator to tell us "Straight ahead for the Temple of the Characters Not Recognized."
In attempts to get commuters to pay attention to things around them, the D.C. Metro has apparently tried to make up words to catch riders' attention. What? you ask. Yup. Five hundred buses and 90 subways carry signs with new made up words for things that already exist:
"Sumpnspicious," -- a play on the slang pronunciation of "something suspicious" -- is defined as "n. (noun) unattended package or odd, unusual behavior that is reported to a bus driver, train operator ... station manager or Metro Police."
or
"PlanBdextrous: ... adj. (adjective) able to plan an alternate route home in case Metro is inaccessible due to unforeseen circumstances."
We think it's kinda dumb. I mean, just say what you have to say. Cutesy phrases are sorta annoying. "See bag, call police" is just as effective. Any D.C. residents have opinions on this? As always, we'd love to hear 'em.
Now this is cool. A PDA-type device called the Sign Translator, which is now a reality, at least as a prototype, can take a picture of a sign in Chinese, recognize the characters, and then provide a translation into English. It's been developed by engineers at Karlsruhe University, in Germany. No word on how much it'll cost, when it's coming to market, anything like that. We can hardly wait for Sign Translator to tell us "Straight ahead for the Temple of the Characters Not Recognized."
In attempts to get commuters to pay attention to things around them, the D.C. Metro has apparently tried to make up words to catch riders' attention. What? you ask. Yup. Five hundred buses and 90 subways carry signs with new made up words for things that already exist:
