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Linguistic landscapes

Multilingual prohibitions

By May 3, 2010June 6th, 20195 Comments3 min read14,236 views

Installment #3 in the mini-series on multilingual signage

The lovers of English poetry among you will recall how the phrase “Betreten verboten” (“No trespassing”) encapsulates his alienation from Berlin and his longing for his English home for Rupert Brooke. Prohibition signs – signs that tell us what not to do– have become much more widespread in the century that has passed since Brooke noticed them on German lawns. This is due to a proliferation of spaces in which people who can no longer be expected to share the same set of norms congregate and circulate (airports, for instance, are a prime space where prohibition signs appear). At the same time, we also have seen a proliferation of rules and these rules often differ across spaces that even one single urban person might frequent in the course of their daily activities (e.g., the increase in smoking bans).

I have a hunch that prohibition signs are more likely to be multilingual than other types of signs (and I’m expecting that my students’ assignment will throw some light on whether that hunch bears out in Sydney’s suburbs). My hunch is based on the fact that humans often take a dim view of “the other” and tend to expect outsiders to be less compliant than insiders. As evidence for my hypothesis I have collected signs such as the one above. This hexalingual sign appears in the canteen of a Soviet-style hotel in Prague. The management of this budget hotel is clearly worried that guests might take the opportunity of the buffet-style breakfast to fill their lunchboxes, too. One thing that the sign obviously does is to mark the hotel as budget accommodation and to position its guests as cheapskates. What’s more, the language choices on the sign clearly address cheapskates of particular linguistic backgrounds. When I stayed in that hotel, most guests were Czechs, Germans and Russians, and it is entirely possible that the six languages represented are the languages of the majority of guests, and including any more languages would not have been useful (nor practical; as it is, the sign is huge).

While the language choices in the above sign in a multilingual tourist destination in the heart of Europe don’t single out a particular group as likely offenders, this sign does. I found this little flier in a hotel room in Sydney. I have a large collection of signage in Australian hotel rooms and they are mostly monolingual in English. In the minority of multilingual hotel room signage, Chinese figures rarely. This sign is thus exceptional in its bilingualism, its language choice, and even in the fact that Chinese appears above English. Clearly, someone is trying very hard to send a message to Chinese guests. When I stayed in that hotel, there were no Chinese guests present. The sign thus does double duty: not only does it alert guests to the prohibition against smoking, it also positions Chinese guests as likely offenders! The non-smoking sign below from a New Zealand train does exactly the same thing: again, we find a bilingual sign in a context dominated by monolingual signage. Again, the other language, Japanese in this case, stands out not only because of the choice itself but also because of its design (this time it’s not the position but the size and color).

Proponents of multilingualism often like to think that bi- and multilingualism per se are better than monolingualism, and that multilingual signs by their very nature are more inclusive than monolingual ones. Not so! It all depends on the context! While these signs include Chinese and Japanese readers as potential recipients of the message, they exclude them from “polite society” by singling them out as likely offenders.

Ingrid Piller

Author Ingrid Piller

Dr Ingrid Piller, FAHA, is Distinguished Professor of Applied Linguistics at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. Her research expertise is in bilingual education, intercultural communication, language learning, and multilingualism in the context of migration and globalization.

More posts by Ingrid Piller

Join the discussion 5 Comments

  • Greg P says:

    Give us a break.

    “While these signs include Chinese and Japanese readers as potential recipients of the message, they exclude them from “polite society” by singling them out as likely offenders.”

    Well, yes. Possibly because people speaking those languages were the main offenders. It costs time and money to put out bilingual signage. The signs were probably there because cleaning staff went to a room the nth time to find that Chinese guests had been smoking, or railway staff had to remind x number of Japanese passengers that they shouldn’t smoke on the train. This is not subliminal discrimination; it is signage which bespeaks frustration with the failure of people from those cultures to observe rules on smoking.

  • Loy Lising says:

    By the time I am making this comment, Ingrid has already posted “Banal Nationalism” which I will also comment on in a minute. So, apologies for this delayed participation but I made a similar observation while holidaying in Hamilton island recently. I saw a couple of ‘multilingual’ signages which got me really excited and hopeful about one place in the country that was being socially inclusive. Signs about “No parking” and “One way” were in English, Chinese and Japanese. While I thought that such information can be easily deduced by simple observation of everyone else’s action, I welcomed and celebrated the promise of being in a place that was socially inclusive especially of tourists who paid good dollars to get there. Alas! my excitement was short-lived when I got to the reception only to queue for a very long time simply because the staff could not find a way to explain to a couple of Korean guests why a safety deposit of $700 was needed to be taken from them. In their halted English they explained sincerely that they had no intention of making any extra purchases while in the island. I stood there thinking, “if only an interpreter is available, and don’t they deserve one?” Once we got to our room, I was even more disappointed to see an elaborate instruction in English on what to do in case of emergency, but none in any other language. I realised that all I saw initially was a case of token multilingualism!

  • Jenny Zhang says:

    The bilingual flier which Ingrid found in a hotel room in Sydney reminded me of a warning sign saying “请保持安静 (Please keep quiet)” in Cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris which also targeted only at Chinese visitors. This monolingual sign kicked off a heated debate over national image and uncivilized behavior of Chinese tourists across China before the Beijing 2008 Olympiad. It is very interesting to read between the lines of prohibition signs, in terms of language choice, context of use and underlying ideologies.

    There also can be seen quite a few literally translated Chinglish signs in mainland China. Of these English signs, one warning sign found in a public lavatory (http://www.flickr.com/photos/pomphorhynchus/353734324/) which reads: Carefully Slip & Fall Down, really made my day.

    Another interesting thing is that bi/multilingual prohibition or warning signs in mainland China are predominantly in two dominant languages: Mandarin (the sole official language of Mainland China) and English (the so-called global language). Compared to European countries where multilingualism has been more socially recognized and applied to practice, bi/multilingual signs in foreign languages other than English are seldom seen in mainland China (excluding Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan). I don’t know if this is another form of monolingualism.

    BTW: The monolingual non-smoking sign in a New Zealand train can be read in both Japanese (Kanji) and Mandarin (traditional character). Am I right, Kimie?

  • xiaoxiao says:

    Thanks! Before I read this post, it has never occurred to me that there is so much hidden behind the language choices of signage. I wonder if this can be taken as a manifestation of ideology, for the choice of some language over another apparently indicates how certain group of people are viewed and this view may well be prejudiced.

  • Kimie Takahashi says:

    An interesting point! In addition to the prohibition signs, I find the same kind of trends in donation signs at churches – I don’t want to be too cynical, but when it comes to money-making opportunities, we see less language boundaries;-)

    Btw, I like the fact that there is no translation for “To stop train in emergency press button” – that to me is more important to be understood than smoking…

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