Foreign Comprehension

A staple of the traveling abroad experience tends to be the experience of fumbling through an unfamiliar language. We have the fortune of traveling in countries whose inhabitants all speak some English (although some only well enough to exhubertanly say 'Good price!'). Despite this convenience, no matter where we go we are confronted with foreign text. Even in Copenhagen, which is the city closest to mainland Europe and thus the city I thought would be the most English-friendly, presents the same amount of its written material in Danish. My few encounters with English have been on restaurant menus, and these are not always reliably bi-lingual. What I find most curious are signs that only provide translations for the parts that the person who made the sign determined not understandable.

Legend for map of City Hall, Stockholm

Laughter ensues when the writer has over-translated a sign. What happens when the writer chooses wrong, and leaves untranslated vital information?

Often, the comprehension effort becomes a linguistic exercise as we learn that 'street' in English is 'gade' in Danish, 'katu' in Finnish and 'gata' in Swedish. When a word is too far beyond comprehension, we look for clues as to its meaning, although even the contents of a store cannot always translate the name above its entrance.

A candy shop in Tivoli, Copenhagen

The row of lollipops in the store clearly indicate it is a candy shop, but I'm suspicious as to the literal translation of 'Bolchekogeriet'. According to the nice young employee, the name does in fact translate to 'Hard Candy Shop' with a particular emphasis on the candy being made in the shop.

If muddling through is not an option, and if an image has been provided, content can be gleaned accordingly. This places a large burden on the image to convey the entire meaning to me, the helpless alien. There is an inverse relationship between words and their reader and and image and its viewer. When I read a sign in a shop window or a poster explaining some event, I feel a burden to understand the meaning of the words (by reading them 'correctly'). Conversely, I consider the image in the shop window to be responsible for containing the proper information and conveying it in a manner understandable by me.

Maps provide a neat integration of image and text, by conveying one's location within a building or urban context, the location of points of interest and the meaning of those points. Through one's understanding of the map as an image conveying location, and the function of a particular place, one can derive the meaning of the words associated with a point.

St. Peter's Cathedral in Malmö, Sweden

 Consider the location A, labeled 'Ingång'. The letter A on the map is located just outside what looks like the physical boundary of the church. Combined with my basic knowledge of church design, and the shape of the building, I can derive the meaning of 'Ingång' to be 'Entrance'. Armed with this new understanding, I can apply it to future situations in which I may need to know where an entrance is, or ask a non-English speaking (in this case Swedish) person where to enter a building.

It may be frustrating to be unable to read all the words, but the city is an environment dripping with context, and one need not look far to understand its meaning.