innsertnamehere
Superstar
sarcasm detector is off I see.
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TTC Cartography, Signage, and Wayfinding
- Thread starter 299 bloor call control.
- Start date
torontologist
Active Member
Not to mention the English capitalization ("Emergency use Only").... who the hell wrote these?
the lemur
Senior Member
I have no idea. It's also not the first time that Metrolinx has screwed up the French (I think the Presto site or app might have had some issues). Would signage inside vehicles like this be part of the manufacturer's responsibility, or does Metrolinx deal with it once the vehicles have been delivered?
Filip
Senior Member
Wow that French is AWFUL.
I'm a native speaker and I didn't understand some of it (thank goodness for the pictograms).
Can't you just hire someone from Montreal to take a quick looksee? Isn't like 75% of the provincial government bilingual??
I'm a native speaker and I didn't understand some of it (thank goodness for the pictograms).
Can't you just hire someone from Montreal to take a quick looksee? Isn't like 75% of the provincial government bilingual??
EastYorkTTCFan
Senior Member
didn't go transit admit to using google translate for some of there things in french I wonder if metrolinx i that for the UP express as well. Also I noticed when I was on it for the free rides it was refereed to as "Up Express" in english and as translation of the full name in french for the anoucments
wopchop
Building Toronto
I know a few people who work for Metrolinx, and a few others who worked on the stations, and they all call it "Up Express".
APTA-2048
Senior Member
Some of the English on their transit system, what little there is, is pretty cringe worthy too.
Wrenkin
Active Member
That's pretty bad. In English it seems you slide the door open in an emergency, but in French the doors just open on their own? Or are already open maybe?
the lemur
Senior Member
There's no shortage of francophone language professionals in the Toronto area that (presumably) Metrolinx could have turned to, and it's not as if getting it translated properly would have been a huge expense in the scheme of things.
the lemur
Senior Member
I think GO had some kind of standard excuse about the French not being the final copy, pressed for time, production error, external supplier, etc.
I ran a few English sentences from the UP Express signage through Google Translate and it didn't generate anything as meaningless or garbled as what's on these signs. It really looks like it was done piecemeal by one or more people who have no real knowledge of French and/or someone using an automated translation tool that is a lot worse than Google (which is pretty decent, allowing for the fact that context is something machine translation still struggles with).
For example, in the emergency instructions where it tells passengers to communicate with personnel by intercom ('Talk to crew'), 'crew' has been parsed as a verb (to equip with crew members, to man, e.g., a ship). Who would seriously parse the sentence that way to get the French 'Parler pour armer', 'talk in order to crew'? Even Google gives the fairly reasonable 'parler à l'équipage' (talk to the crew) for this. It's astounding that it got this far.
the lemur
Senior Member
Yeah, but that's at least done by someone with a working familiarity with the language (and slightly wonky English is par for the course in Montreal). What's in the UP trains is probably the result of cheaping out by getting someone with almost no clue about French to cobble it together from machine-generated snippets.
W. K. Lis
Superstar
Maybe I should take my People's Car (Volkswagen) over to see a performance of Circle of the Sun (Cirque du Soleil) the next time they are in town.
Johnny Au
Senior Member
This website is called "Urban Meeting Place."
You will like the Atlas of True Names: http://www.kalimedia.com/Atlas_of_True_Names.html
There is even a map of Canada: http://www.kalimedia.com/Atlas_of_True_Names_Canada.html
the lemur
Senior Member
Actually it's 'Urban Trees-in-the-Water' and our city's name came from a different location: http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/earth-sciences/geography/place-names/origins-geographical-names/9226
Electrify
Senior Member
I noticed that they are introducing new line maps. Really impressed by them:
Only real critique I have with them is if they try and implement some of this style on the new system map (which I hope they do), the green express colour may make them blend in with the Bloor-Danforth line.
Only real critique I have with them is if they try and implement some of this style on the new system map (which I hope they do), the green express colour may make them blend in with the Bloor-Danforth line.