Blog Marco

I'm sure you've come across it before - street signs (or any public sign in fact) that have a serious message to convey, but instead makes you titter because it was conveyed badly.

Certainly there are heaps of sites online which will direct you to Japanese attempts at English - with hilarious results such as this and this.

However, it's even funnier when there's a English sign in Australia - surely you can't claim poor translation here.

A key example would be in North Sydney, where, painted alongside the kerb beside numerous street crossings is the sign "Think before you cross", accompanied by what looks like one of those chalk outlines of someone's body at a crime scene (unfortunately not seen in the pic so well, but it's on the right of the sign). Basically the body suggests that your body could be looking like a smaller, flatter and smudged version of the Gingerbread Man in Shrek 2 if you don't "think" before you cross the road? The figure looks more like something in Leslie Nielsen's satirical "Naked Gun" movies than the grim scenes of CSI.

As for the sign itself, I always thought that it was more important to "look" rather than "think" while crossing a busy street. Isn't that the reason why so many people almost get run over - they're too busy lost in their own thoughts (otherwise known as "thinking") to notice the oncoming car?

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