France puzzled by new road signs

 

France has just come up with some strange new road signs. What would you say is designated by the faintly erotic half-moons here? The sign informs passing traffic that nearby is “a garden that has been officially certified as a garden of note”. On inquiry, the Ministry of Culture defines this as a garden certified as having “design, plants and care of a remarkable level”.

This one is a bit clearer. It tells thirsty drivers that they can buy wine nearby

If they consume it, they might then want to look for this sign:

 

The 20 new panneaux de signalisation from the superministry of the environment are intended to update obsolete pictograms. Several are mystifying and I'll get back to them. Writing the story for the newspaper, I was musing about the way that road signs reflect the national culture.

In Europe, they have been pretty much standardised over the past half century. Typically, France had the biggest influence, devising elegant symbols to replace cluttery words. An international conference in Paris in 1908 put together the first list, with signs for dangerous bends and intersections. Britain contributed the triangle as the universal warning symbol but waited until the late 1960s before fully conforming to the continental system.

The old British road signs, still visible in some places, are full of atmosphere. They make you think of black and white films and taking the Riley for a spin through the Cotswolds.

 

 

Europe adopted the American red octagonal stop sign in the 1960s but to European eyes US -- and Australian -- road signs appear old-fashioned with their wordiness. My favourite, from Mayor Ed Koch's days in New York City, was  "Don't Even think of Parking Here".

 

Australia's yellow signs warning of kangaroos have become a world-wide symbol for that country, but I like this one against alcohol.

The older French signs were full of Gallic atmosphere. The first recorded sign of the motoring age was an 1894 danger warning on the Route Nationale 7 near Cannes, on the Riviera, put up before a bend by the Touring Club de France. The signs telling you when you leave a town reflect good French logic, but have been little copied elsewhere.

 

Gallic logic often comes into play. I like "Un train peut en cacher un autre" on railway crossings. The warning that "one train can hide another" has become a general expression for  "be ready for the unexpected" or "don't be fooled".

Foreigners are also confused with the signs in towns saying Toutes Directions (all directions), which sometimes lead to another sign offering Autres Directions (other directions). It's worse still in Brussels: the bilingual Belgian capital bamboozles unwary motorists by alternating the same “other directions” panels in French and Dutch. Drivers trying to exit the centre of the city take the Toutes Directions and the next sign says Alle Richtingen, the same thing in Dutch. In the same way that the French city of Lille suddenly turns into Riesel when you drive across Belgium's invisible language frontier. The Flemish zone cannot bring itself to use French, except in small print.
 
The best pictogram signs are the ones that make obvious sense. That's the problem with several of the new French signs. As le Figaro put it: “A certain number of them remain perfectly impenetrable to drivers with hundreds of thousands of kilometres under their wheels,”

 

These two mean that you are approaching “a museum certified as a Museum of France” and “the entrance area of a sensitive natural space”. A new image of a speeding train indicates the presence of “a station with traffic above 30,000 passengers a year”. It is difficult to understand the point of these.

The one with the man shoving a canoe into water is supposed to tell you that you are at a place where you can put boats in the water.

The new batch of French signs shows how official zeal to convey alerts with simple shapes has overcome common sense. My colleague Marie Tourres, The Times'  French reporter,  sought some professional reaction.  “Too much information kills the information,” said Jean-Pierre Lemonnier, secretary-general of the National Driving Instructors’ Union.

“Some of these new signs are absolutely without interest. It’s over-information to keep the sign-makers in business. They have to stop the spiral of stupidity, like the one showing the exit of a tunnel or the risk of bumping into a slower vehicle.”

Lemonnier wondered what the nanny-like ministry would come up with next. “Why not a sign for French overseas territories warning of the risk of falling coconuts?”

Marina Duhamel, an artist who has written a history of road signs, noted that much of the world had copied the brown signs indicating places of interest that France devised in the 1970s. However, the new ones are baffling and superfluous, she said. “Some are so obscure, they evoke nothing.”

Comments

[Dominique]

CB says : "The warning that "one train can hide another" has become a media cliche for "be ready for the unexpected"."

I don't exactly agree and would make it more precise if you don't mind. I'd rather say : "one event can hide an other event you don't see".

Very french minded indeed. The application of this is us being always trying to find the "hidden train". That may explain a lot of very french debates regarding politics, economics etc...

Le gouvernement prend un train de mesures? Le peuple se demande instantanément : quel train se cache derrière celui qu'on nous montre?

(The administration is drafting a visible action plan? people ask right away : what are the hidden ones?)

[Pierre Bernardi]

Oh, and the triangle was meant to evoke danger? As in, 'cars may disappear to Bermuda'?

The grapes, the beach and the canoe are excellent. Much of French signage is geared towards tourism. Consistency is the key. A single sign is enough to tell a motorist that they are now in Belgium: in comparison with the French, the Belgian signage is sloppy. British signs are pretty good but I always found the discontinued circle of a roundabout a little uneconomical.

I have a photo of an African road marking which reads : "SOTP" (sic).

[Innocent Abroad]

Indeed.

Fortunately the English still hold the record for the world's most pointless notice - posted not at the roadside, but near a reservoir in Yorkshire.

It read, in full: "Penalty for defacing this notice: £20. By Order."

[dot king]

"Les caisses sont vides", si "plus vide que jamais" était possible, on pourrait le dire.
1 on paie quelqu'un pour y penser,
2 on paie quelqu'un pour les dessiner
3 on paie quelqu'un pour les fabriquer
4 on paie quelqu'un pour les installer

multiplier le tout par plusieurs centaines de millers d'€uros (estimation modeste)

5 on va les enlever ou les endommager
6 on paie quelqu'un pour les remplacer
7 et ainsi de suite

même s'ils sont "jolis", est-ce qu'on a vraiment besoin?
c'est le besoin le plus important pour la France en ce moment précis?

comme dans "Papy fait la Résistance" lorsque tout autour est le chaos le plus complet, je répète: "les caisses son vides"

[Azloon/Rob Furlong]

["Penalty for defacing this notice: £20. By Order."] Innocent Abroad

lol, hard to 'top' this.

my pet peeve [listen up grammarians -- you know who you are] in arizona is a sign that says 'Speed Reduced Ahead.' of course, this means the speed LIMIT is reduced ahead. preferable, imo, would be 'Reduce Speed Ahead' since it isn't the speed that is reduced, but the speed limit.

in the u.s. intermountain west (everything between colorado and california), every /city town's 'entry' signage mentions the town's elevation above sea level and the year it was founded. hardly vital, but interesting and something to talk to your bored children about on a long trip.

european symbol signage is much more prevalent here since the mandated adoption off the metric system two (?) decades ago, which ended up never catching on and so was scuttled. but the road signs live on, and are much better than the 'nothing' that proceeded it.

[Pat Roberts]

I once heard two married ladies in a patisserie in Neuilly discussing the marital difficulties of a mutual friend.

In this bit of gossip, the term "un train peut en cacher un autre" was employed to mean that identifying a man's mistress was no guarantee that he wasn't running a second one too, and possibly even deploying the first one to put people off the scent. So much meaning packed into one metaphor... !

[Joan Arles]

I love the "un train peut en cacher un autre". It is deliciously French. The new signs are going a bit far in the quest for elegance as you put it. The "gardens of note" is like a Rorsach ink blot test. The way you interpret it shows the way you think. I think it's meant to be a bit of garden architecture, but "slightly erotic" is fine by me, Charles [Saw you on Canal+ tv today]

[dot king]

"I once heard two married ladies in a patisserie in Neuilly" (Pat Roberts)

No better way to start any story IMO. Brilliant!

[rocket]

what about the RATP logo

http://www.ecole-letoile.com/images/ratp.gif

It's a woman with her head in the submissive position. I got this one the day they came out with it years ago. My French friends refuse to believe me, but I'm sorry the Seine doesn't wind through Paris like that.

http://www.parisnet.com/parismap.html

In Southern Florida there are signs on route 95 which say. "No Littering. $200 fine" As the Florida Highway Department always needs money I took this to mean

Don't throw out litter but if you want to throw out $200 thats fine with us.

The first time I saw "un train peut en cacher un autre" I lived in St Germain Les Arpajon and someone had written an "i" in back of the first "un"

So even today I can only relate to

"uni train peut en cacher un autre"

The best however was a travel agency sign near St. Michel some years ago and they had a big sign with an airplane and written underneath was

"Please go away"

Maybe it wasn't a translation mistake after all!

I will regret till the day I die that I never took a picture of this.

For some real laughers in Japanese translated into english go here.

http://www.engrish.com/

and click on the left hand side.

Or this one I took in Nara

http://tinyurl.com/6ltfts

[JeanDanielT]

I like "Last Exit to Brooklyn"

[Barrie Garfinkel]

Too bad the French authorities in their infinite wisdom didn't think to have a sign that read "STAY OFF MY ASS" included with a pic of an auto hovering an inch behind a donkey.

[Maggie G]

"Too bad the French authorities in their infinite wisdom didn't think to have a sign that read "STAY OFF MY ASS" included with a pic of an auto hovering an inch behind a donkey."
(Barrie Garfinkle)

Hear! Hear! I certainly agree with this one. That's the sign they need most of all.

[qwerty]

Charles, if I spread a banner over my tennis court with a picture of an airplane and the words "please go away" will you all go away (you fly, don't you?)? It's a nice bend in the Seine but you don't ALL have to follow it.

[Dominique]

Barrie, Maggie,

You can have this one printed and stick it on your back window :

http://tinyurl.com/6lesha

[dot king]

"please go away" QWERTY

Not sure that would work, a nice presidential quotation would surely be better . . .

[qwerty]

Dot: yes, that would be good for the 14th of July. The whole French air squadron flies over the house just a few minutes before they appear on TV on the Champs-Elysées. Actually, it's rather nice to watch, though flying geese and swans are prettier and slightly less noisy.

[qwerty]

Actually, I'll use the presidential message for the jet-skis, I think.

[Terry]

Very interesting blog. The whole point of signs are to convey a quick message to the driver. A picture is supposed to convey 1000 words. It looks like France is trying to cram in 3-5000 for beauty's sake. If the signs create confusion, then the point is lost.

Here are some signs that cause some amusement.

http://www.hotrodsandclassics.net/roadsigns/roadsigns1.htm

[Marguerite.]

Un panneau de signalisation qui me laisse perplexe, c'est : "Chute de pierres ". Je me suis toujours demandee ce qu'il fallait faire quand on vous previent gentiment que vous risquez d'en recevoir sur la tete si vous avancez sur cette route.
Il y a un que j'aime beaucoup c'est "Attention, ouvriers ! ".
Mais le plus beau , c'est celui que j'ai vu a Abidjan, dans un terrain vague, entre de tres chics villas, a Cocody :"Il est interdit de faire cabinet ici " (en francais d'Afrique). Celui-la, il etait explicite.

[Matthieu]

If I may, the sign saying that you are leaving a town also implies that the speed limit is raised from 50 kph to 90 kph, so they do serve a purpose...

[Azloon/Rob Furlong]

[the sign saying that you are leaving a town also implies that the speed limit is raised from 50 kph to 90 kph] Matthieu

ah, those subtle french, requiring unsuspecting motorists to ferret out additional meaning from the most obvious of signage.

why not a new speed limit sign? too obvious?

how about this: 'la limite apparent de vitesse peut en cacher la limite reel."

then leave 'em guessing.

[dot king]

"why not a new speed limit sign? too obvious?"

because if you live in France, you know that the speed limit within a conglommeration is 50kph and unless otherwise indicated 90kph on a main road (and if you're a visitor, you should have genned up before arriving)

the signs are there to let you know the borders of the built-up area, the rest you are assumed as knowing

some towns/villages have a slow-down patch in which the limit is 70kph to allow you to adjust down to 50kph less abruptly

the police are often just inside border-lines with their speed-trap binocs, and they are merciless
quite rightly so

[Azloon/Rob Furlong]

[if you're a visitor, you should have genned up before arriving)] DOT

kinda hard to 'gen up,' Dot, if you don't know what the hell 'genned up' means.

i thought that the movement to adopt international signage symbols was an attempt to make highway use easier for non-native language speakers?

mmmmmm.....let me guess.......France is different?

now you want everyone to 'gen up' before getting behind a wheel in france. does that, by any chance, mean to have a few stiff drinks?

[Valentin]

Marguerite:
"Un panneau de signalisation qui me laisse perplexe, c'est : "Chute de pierres ". Je me suis toujours demandee ce qu'il fallait faire quand on vous previent gentiment que vous risquez d'en recevoir sur la tete si vous avancez sur cette route."

The falling rocks sign can be taken as a strong warning against having a barbecue stop there, I guess :)

"Il y a un que j'aime beaucoup c'est "Attention, ouvriers ! "."

Must be for the ladies, that one !

"Mais le plus beau , c'est celui que j'ai vu a Abidjan, dans un terrain vague, entre de tres chics villas, a Cocody :"Il est interdit de faire cabinet ici "

LOL very polite, those people - as seen in Maggie G's story about african English speakers. (in any case more polite that the Français de souche splashing "ça me fait ch*er!"-s all day long)

[dot king]

"now you want everyone to 'gen up' before getting behind a wheel in france. does that, by any chance, mean to have a few stiff drinks"
Azloon

Sorry, "gen up" must be an English English expression, I'd thought it was more general. It means to acquaint yourself with. Collect some knowledge about.
In the way that you might read about France and certain "do's" "do nots", and customs, how to say "good evening" "thank you" etc before arriving in ANY country - not just France.
I don't know about Americans, but in general, Brits who are going to visit another country, try to learn a bit about it beforehand.
Come on, speed limits and the respecting of them is a pretty reasonable thing to be expected to "bone up on" (are you happier with that?) - especially as the on-the-spot fines could eat into your holiday budget.
BTW whatever you do, NOT a few stiff drinks before driving in France - we're almost at tolerance zero - and probably will be soon. Also don't phone whilst driving, and be sure to wear your seat belt - and make sure your passengers wear theirs, and don't wander across any unbroken white lines. They're out to GETYA!

[Azloon/Rob Furlong]

[They're out to GETYA!] Dot

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhUHdvhMKpg

Deborah Harry aka Blondie

[Terry]

What's the French sign for "Caution: Olympic Torch Crossing"?

Anyone?

[qwerty]

"Attention, vous allez vous faire torcher."

[dot king]

They're out to GETYA!

You're getting the general idea now

terrific clip - makes you wonder how the world got started on "blonde" jokes

[Blendi Progri]

Another sign-related phenomena, that I find, is on the increase, is that in some parts of the roads in UK there are far too many Signs, it creates a visual cluster and helps in confusing people.

To me it seems impossible to read / see them all, simply there no time to check 15 signs in a 20 m stretch and then the de-sensitising mechanism kicks in, people will ignore them, often overlooking important messages.
-----------------------------

An interesting fact is that during WW2 in South of UK, the Homeguard took down many road sign to confuse the Invading German army

[Rob]

Charles mentions the Australian kangaroo sign. I saw a variation in Innsbruck, Austria in the 90s'. The wording with it said, "There are no kangaroos in Austria."
When I smiled as approached the person selling them he said it was no joke - Americans come to Austria and ask where the kangaroos are!

[Azloon/Rob Furlong]

[Americans come to Austria and ask where the kangaroos are!] l'autre Rob

yeah, so what's your point?