Signage and the state

SLOP8217 · Week 7

Some errors are not made by translators.

I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated.

The Swansea road sign primary

China’s national guidance on English in public service areas prescribes the wording of thousands of individual signs

Then there is the Welsh road sign a Swansea council put up in 2008

Outline

  • standardised signage: what a clause can specify, and what it cannot
  • who is obliged, who produces, and what sits between them

Outline

  • the Swansea sign, read as a workflow rather than as a translation
  • why the funniest artefact in the course has no translator in it

At the bench on Wednesday

Read the standard against the sign

Wednesday, 14 April

Material
a clause and a sign
Operation
reading one against the other
Leaves
the workflow step where the two parted