Sometimes the advice offered to tourists by the numerous and well-intentioned posters placed around hotels can vary from amusing to incomprehensible. Whilst living in France I was luck enough to embark on a road trip down from Rouen to Grenoble and back. On the way we stopped in Dijon, which is a delightful town with lots of cultural heritage (not to mention the mustard!) and plenty to see and do. Yet the most interesting thing I found there was a poster on the hotel room door. It kindly asks guests to “Be careful with the smokes: Toxicity”. It was not made clear that this was only in the event of a fire, so am I to believe that there is likely to be toxic smoke drifting through the hotel corridors? Then in the lift I am greeted with a sign that reads “Do not use lift in case of fire.” Is it simply by virtue of using the lift that there might be a fire or are guests being advised that the best way to ensure that they won’t be stuck in the lift in a fire is to avoid it completely? If so why bother installing one at all?
My personal favourite error from this particular establishment was to be found on the general advice poster in our room; “Let switched off the electrical items Which are without control” Having studied translations and worked with a number of French speakers who have enough of a grasp on English to see that this sentence is evidently utter nonesense, I am left wondering how the translator – presumably a Frenchman as I can see ‘laissez’ being translated as ‘let’ rather than ‘leave’ – could have decided that this was a perfectly acceptable translation. The mind boggles. Thankfully the images surrounding this piece of information provide a solid basis of meaning; to one side there are several plugs all going in to one socket and to the other there are two people standing either side of what can only be described as a firework display.
So remember, if you ever stay in this establishment, or one similar, that there aren’t toxic clouds of smoke roaming the corridors, the lift won’t catch fire if you use it and the hotel staff won’t hold a firework display in your room if you plug everything you own in one socket. The management are simply trying to remind you of things you probably wouldn’t normally do anyway. So take care and be careful with the smokes.
~ Chris