Even English signs give me trouble.
“Bus Coming Soon” read one posting at a remote bus stop, several hundred miles south of New Delhi. I had only been in India for six days and didn’t know any better. “Soon,” I later learned, can be used to describe anything up to and including the full term of Styrofoam decomposition.
I sat at least an hour before initiating conversation with an ancient man planted beside me. I asked him how long he had been waiting. He wiggled his head expertly in nine directions at once as if to say yes, no, maybe. Sadly lacking any Hindi, I could only pose the question again and again in English, each time carving away a potentially superfluous word that might have severed our fragile connection.
Finally a reply: three days. I tried to determine when the next bus might be coming. Another head wiggle. Apparently, the bus would arrive in the next few hours or next incarnation, he wasn’t sure. I gave it another hour, then hiked into town and bought passage on a minivan.
I’ve spent much of the past nine years wondering around countries with alphabets that look to the untrained eye like the markings of a rabid cat whetting its claws on balsa wood. Which makes navigating by phrase book no simple feat.
To help bridge the communication gap, numerous innovative locals have (in an effort to help terminally lost, linguistically challenged travelers) put up English signs around their homelands. Unfortunately, this often makes things even more confusing.
Not that I need a sign to achieve miscommunication. I’m perfectly capable of this on my own. Signs are tangible, uniquely visual, deliciously exposed, and travelers often have to depend on them to navigate a town, locate accommodations, even obey the law — a scary thought if you’ve ever encountered any of these free-standing cartoons.
So what should you do if you happen to stumble across one? Keep your sense of humor and reach for your camera.
Ironically, as the use of English spreads and cultures around the world endeavor to welcome us, more and more hilarious signs go up. (Roughly two-thirds of the planet speak English as a first, second or third language.) With new signs appearing every day, the only way to keep track of them is with an army of travel photographers.
So, the next time you find yourself scratching your head or chuckling at a sign, please snap a picture and submit it at signspotting so other travelers can view and rate your photo. If we’re able to publish your snapshot, you get $50, a photo credit, and you’ll qualify for a chance to win the current grand prize, a Star Alliance round-the- world plane ticket.
A Colorado College graduate and former freelancer for The Denver Post, Doug Lansky lives in Sweden. The SignSpotting signs will run on Page 2T weekly.
