What countries have bi, tri (or even more?!) lingual signs?

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MorganFlint M40 A40
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Re: What countries have bi, tri (or even more?!) lingual sig

Post by MorganFlint M40 A40 »

This Israeli Sign has 3 languages, 3 alphabets and 2 different writing directions. http://www.rhinocarhire.com/CorporateSi ... Israel.jpg
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Re: What countries have bi, tri (or even more?!) lingual sig

Post by carawaystick »

HPM wrote:In France some regions have their own language (Britain, Pays Basque, Corse...), and these languages persist with the tradition, so we could find bi-lingual signs, mainly on the input of local signs.

...

For me, the most abusive bi-lingual signs are in Perpignan, next to Spain : all the directional signs are translate in Catalan !
This is the Perpignan, which is in Catalunya, having Catalan signs?
The same Perpignan in PO dept which has a gold background with 4 blood streaks, the basis of the catalan flag, has sign written in catala?



Google images say this sign
http://www.google.ie/imgres?imgurl=http ... 36&ndsp=12
has 6 languages, and that misses 2 of the official languages of norn iron.
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Re: What countries have bi, tri (or even more?!) lingual sig

Post by HPM »

Yes, Perpignan is a French city in the departement of Pyrénées-Orientales (P-O), the French Catalunya. It's France, but Catalunya and hispanic identity are very strong (it's why signs are wrote in French and Catalan).
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Re: What countries have bi, tri (or even more?!) lingual signs?

Post by Bfivethousand »

Whilst taking a StreetView road trip around the fire-affected areas of Portugal, I came across this sign at the temporary end of the A13.

As brand new dual carriageways go it strikes me as pretty darn steep and twisty, the authorities must also think so by installing the sign not just in Portuguese but also in English!

What would the conventional Spanish translation be for "Keep in low gear" - if it's significantly different from "Trave con o motor" (crudely translated as "lock with the engine") I would be surprised that English was chosen in favour of it.

Incidentally, I was surprised how similar Portuguese signing was to British signing - lots of Transport Heavy / Medium, identical designs for ADSs, route confirmatory signs etc. and many examples of carbon copies of regulatory signing too, e.g. speed limits.
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Re: What countries have bi, tri (or even more?!) lingual signs?

Post by Glom »

Bicester has trilingual signs. English, Arabic and Chinese.
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Re: What countries have bi, tri (or even more?!) lingual signs?

Post by Owain »

Bfivethousand wrote:What would the conventional Spanish translation be for "Keep in low gear" - if it's significantly different from "Trave con o motor" (crudely translated as "lock with the engine") I would be surprised that English was chosen in favour of it.
The French A5 has several bilingual signs about engine braking.

There is no Spanish on the A5, but I'd imagine that the phrase would be something more similar to the Italian (shown on the latter of those two signs) than to Portuguese. The Italian is a direct translation of 'use your engine braking'.
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Re: What countries have bi, tri (or even more?!) lingual signs?

Post by Goldberg »

They set up a sign in Haderslev, Denmark, with the town's name bilingual in Danish/German.
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Re: What countries have bi, tri (or even more?!) lingual signs?

Post by mikehindsonevans »

This thread took me back sixteen years.
I was working in Jersey in 2001, when the languages used on certain roadsigns expanded from:

English-French-Portuguese (reflecting the large number of hotel workers from the Algarve et al) to:

English-French-Portuguese-Polish (reflecting........).

An interesting moment in the history of population migration.

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Re: What countries have bi, tri (or even more?!) lingual signs?

Post by Viator »

Bfivethousand wrote:Whilst taking a StreetView road trip around the fire-affected areas of Portugal, I came across this sign at the temporary end of the A13.

As brand new dual carriageways go it strikes me as pretty darn steep and twisty, the authorities must also think so by installing the sign not just in Portuguese but also in English!

What would the conventional Spanish translation be for "Keep in low gear" - if it's significantly different from "Trave con o motor" (crudely translated as "lock with the engine") I would be surprised that English was chosen in favour of it.

Incidentally, I was surprised how similar Portuguese signing was to British signing - lots of Transport Heavy / Medium, identical designs for ADSs, route confirmatory signs etc. and many examples of carbon copies of regulatory signing too, e.g. speed limits.
Interesting!

The Spanish equivalent would be "utilice freno motor" (use engine brake) or sometimes "use motor como freno" (use engine as brake). I expect that the words "con motor" at the top of a steep descent are sufficient in themselves for any Spanish visitors with only rudimentary Portuguese to be able to guess that "travar" means "brake".

The English wording, of course, comes at it from another angle. It's notable that the Portuguese sign-makers have gone for the British "keep in low gear" rather than the "stay in low gear" more usually seen west of the Atlantic.

As you've observed, the British influence on the design of Portuguese signs (especially in relation to directional signage) is quite strong. (The contrast between modern signs and antique, but still surviving in places, more French-influenced signs -- Portugal's equivalent of "pre-Worboys"? -- is also very noticeable.)
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Re: What countries have bi, tri (or even more?!) lingual signs?

Post by Osthagen »

The are some bi-lingual signs in Pennsylvania, USA.

There is a language in Pennsylvania called 'Pennsylvania Dutch', which is a somewhat misleading name as the language is actually a dialect of German.

The sign below, for example lists 'Cat's Back Road', a street in Lancaster County, PA, in both its English form and its Pennsylvania Dutch one, Katze Boucle Weeg.
PennGermanSign.png
PennGermanSign.png (24.82 KiB) Viewed 2588 times
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Re: What countries have bi, tri (or even more?!) lingual signs?

Post by Viator »

I don't think it's been mentioned before, but directional signage in the north of Hokkaido, Japan, is in Japanese, English, and Russian:
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7486 ... 0/sign.jpg

Which is nice for visitors -- I do hate the way, though, that Japanese sign-makers will never use two lines for anything: when space is tight they just squash everything up to the point of near-total illegibility...
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Re: What countries have bi, tri (or even more?!) lingual signs?

Post by AndrewGPaul »

Not signage, but Emirates have multilingual announcements; English and Arabic on the UK-Dubai leg and English, Arabic and Japanese on the Dubai-Japan leg.


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Re: What countries have bi, tri (or even more?!) lingual signs?

Post by Mark Hewitt »

Viator wrote: As you've observed, the British influence on the design of Portuguese signs (especially in relation to directional signage) is quite strong. (The contrast between modern signs and antique, but still surviving in places, more French-influenced signs -- Portugal's equivalent of "pre-Worboys"? -- is also very noticeable.)
Not to mention it's using transport font and they layout would be familiar on UK roads.
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Re: What countries have bi, tri (or even more?!) lingual signs?

Post by B9127 »

NHK World - the Japanese TV service in the UK on Sky channel 507 noted at the end of tonight news that all road signs will now be bi-lingual English/Japanese starting with primarily tourist areas but will be rolled out across the country .
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Re: What countries have bi, tri (or even more?!) lingual signs?

Post by FosseWay »

Goldberg wrote:They set up a sign in Haderslev, Denmark, with the town's name bilingual in Danish/German.
There is plenty of bilingual signage on both sides of the border in Sønderjylland and Slesvig. Bilingualism there is quite useful: I read Danish far faster than I read German, but spoken German is (generally) easier to understand than spoken Danish.
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Re: What countries have bi, tri (or even more?!) lingual signs?

Post by exiled »

B9127 wrote:NHK World - the Japanese TV service in the UK on Sky channel 507 noted at the end of tonight news that all road signs will now be bi-lingual English/Japanese starting with primarily tourist areas but will be rolled out across the country .
If Japan is seeking to develop tourism this is probably useful. Will it be English or Romanised Japanese?
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Re: What countries have bi, tri (or even more?!) lingual signs?

Post by Osthagen »

Come to think of it, I've encountered one or two bilingual Norwegian/Sami signs in Norway.
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Re: What countries have bi, tri (or even more?!) lingual sig

Post by scott125 »

FosseWay wrote:
Comstock wrote:
scragend wrote:
On the way out of Dover on the A2, there are "keep left" signs in English, French, German and Swedish ("Kör till vänster").

The others I can understand, but why Swedish - are there enough Swedes passing through Dover to warrant it?
That does seem an odd choice. I would have though Dutch, Polish or maybe Italian would be more sensible choices for the fourth most common language for incomming drivers.
I've always thought it an odd choice as well, especially at Dover. Back in the days of direct ferry connections with Scandinavia the ferries landed at Harwich, Hull and Newcastle, not Dover.

The failure to choose Polish, which today would be a self-evident choice, can be explained by the fact that those signs have been there for a very long time. They predate the entry of Poland etc. into the EU and possibly even the fall of the Wall.

Clutching at straws here, but could Swedish have been chosen because it is also intelligible by Danes and Norwegians? Even so, for all three nationalities English is a more obvious choice than any of the other Scandinavian languages.
I remember a sign at a services near London that had French , Spanish etc but also it had albanian . Never met any albanians here
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Re: What countries have bi, tri (or even more?!) lingual signs?

Post by Truvelo »

Hungary has VMS in three languages.
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Re: What countries have bi, tri (or even more?!) lingual sig

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scott125 wrote:I remember a sign at a services near London that had French , Spanish etc but also it had albanian . Never met any albanians here
Clacket Lane? English, German, French and Czech.

Quite why Czech rather than Polish I don't know.
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