Bilingual Road Signs in Ireland

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This thread is only for discussion on the design of bilingual road signage in Ireland.

This thread is NOT a discussion on the Irish language itself.

Links:

• Design research journal by Garret Reil
  An examination of Ireland’s dual-language road signs.
• Forum: Linguistic Issues - Bilingual road signs
  Huge discussion and examples of bilingual road sign around the world.
• Poor Road Signage Pictures thread

I would like to see your proposals for improved Irish road signage in this thread. You can also post examples from other countries.

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Here are a few of my own proposals:

Current signage


Proposed 1


Proposed 2

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Current signage


Proposed 1


Proposed 2

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Current signage


Proposed

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Current signage


Proposed 1


Proposed 2

Amtmann

This was posted by Garret Reil in 2009 on another forum:

L1011

As goes the overhead gantry signage, I don't agree with warning text being translated at all (the "PREPARE TO STOP").

It reduces readability significantly and there isn't a single Irish-only speaker in the country; let alone a single Irish-only driver. Also a lot of them are recognisable by non-English speakers (many countries use identical STOP signs even if they don't have that word).

They definitely should *never ever ever ever* be Irish-only as I've seen in the Gaeltacht from time to time. A warning that only a few % of drivers can read is worse than useless.

JohnC.

I think the Proposed 1 examples above reduce readability. They need something to differentiate them. Being the same, it makes it look like one name split across two lines. On bigger signs with several names, it is harder to read quickly. It just becomes a mass of words with nothing breaking them. And I know what I'm looking at. I'd hate to be a foreigner looking at those. The current italics or Proposal 2 with different colours is easier.

Nuttzz

I agree that Proposed 1 examples above reduce readability, what is wrong with what we have at present?

Empire o de Sun

I did this one before, though I used the wrong font for clearview at the time

Chris_5339762

Proposed 2 would be better I reckon. However, I'd be for removing the Irish entirely but thats just me. [I understand why its there and all but how many people ACTUALLY USE IT?]

pegasus1

You would get people slowing down to read your proposals and that is just wrong...road signage should jump out at you and not be in any way confusing !!

etchyed

Nuttzz wrote: »

I agree that Proposed 1 examples above reduce readability, what is wrong with what we have at present?

What's wrong with the current arrangement is that putting the Irish in italics seems to attribute less importance to it. While road signs are exempt from the requirement for equal prominence, it makes the presence of the Irish on the signs look tokenistic (which some would argue it is anyway, but that's a debate for another day). Road signs are one of the most prominent examples we have of Irish language policy, and whether you agree with the premise of that policy or not, you have to agree that the current signs are a pretty half-assed way of implementing it.

Having italics on road signs is a bizarre idea, and I'd love to know how it ever got off the ground. Most people don't notice this now because they're so used to it, but when you see signs for places like Port Laoise and Dún Laoghaire with just the italics and no English you realise how stupid it looks.

More importantly, the current signage puts the English in all caps, which is proven to be a lot less readable from a distance than mixed case. The UK font that Ireland uses (Transport) was never meant to be used in all caps.

Finally, and least importantly, the current signs are ugly.

Personally I find the 1st proposal the most appealing, and it works perfectly well in Wales. But realistically I think that Proposed 2 would be the best implementation. There is no reason for this to be controversial. The signs could be replaced as would be required anyway, but it would be a very slow process as the NRA have been putting up a lot of new signage lately. It's a shame the recent changes in signage didn't lead to a rethink of the way the languages are treated. I suspect it would be politically difficult to do, with all kinds of accusations of money wasting, when in fact it wouldn't cost an extra penny to roll these signs out over the space of 20 years or so.

Bill G

I don't care about the language, but what country in the world except Ireland puts the city/town that is furthest away at the top of the sign, and the closest town at the bottom? That makes absolutely no sense at all......

Empire o de Sun

Not just the treatment of the languages has to be looked at, but also the fonts for route numbers, and speed limits. The should be the same or atleast part of the same family of fonts.

The Clearview Family of fonts should be used in my opinion.

Nuttzz

etchyed wrote: »

Road signs are one of the most prominent examples we have of Irish language policy, and whether you agree with the premise of that policy or not, you have to agree that the current signs are a pretty half-assed way of implementing it.

I dont want to embark on a language policy discussion, however road signs are for getting motorists from A to B and serve no other function imho

How do they manage this in Canada where they have a real bilingual situation?

From the limited driving I did in Toronto this year I cant remember any bilingual road signs (but then I could have filtered them out like I do with the Irish bits here)

ardmacha

I dont want to embark on a language policy discussion, however road signs are for getting motorists from A to B and serve no other function imho

Why are you doing it, then? Keep the thread about sign design, please.
Scottish style proposal 2 is good.

L1011

Bill G wrote: »

I don't care about the language, but what country in the world except Ireland puts the city/town that is furthest away at the top of the sign, and the closest town at the bottom? That makes absolutely no sense at all......

UK. From whom our road directional signage is roughly copied; like how our road instructional signage is roughly US.

ardmacha

UK. From whom our road directional signage is roughly copied; like how our road instructional signage is roughly US.

Don't worry. As a requirement of the current negotiations, these "Anglo" style arrangements will soon be harmonised in favour of German style signage. Personally I'd be happy with the present styles with German consistency.

marmurr1916

MYOB wrote: »

UK. From whom our road directional signage is roughly copied; like how our road instructional signage is roughly US.

If directional signposts are supposed to be a visual shorthand for a route, then it makes perfect sense to have the destination furthest away at the top of the sign.

OT: I can't see much wrong with bilingual road signs in Ireland. Most people, even Irish speakers, will be looking for the English language name for their destination. The present system, where these are in a clear, easy to read font, in capital letters makes it easy to see them even when driving at high speed.

It's true that bilingual signs are slightly harder to read than monolingual signs but I think anyone who has real difficulty in reading these signs probably shouldn't be driving in the first place.

FWIW, similar signs are used in many Arab countries, with destinations shown in Arabic script and Latin script.



Arabic speakers clearly look at the Arabic script, non-Arabic speakers look at the Latin script.

AFAIK, this doesn't cause any problems in those countries.

Bill G

I've never seen a sign in the UK with the farthest town at the top.

MES4453.jpg

If it was the standard in the UK, they have changed it, probably because having it that way is stupid.

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Here are some Gaelic examples:

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Example of dreadful signage design in Donegal.

UK Transport font in forced italics.

Stonewolf

Especially given than nobody uses the Irish versions of the top and bottom ones. Actually, I don't even know what the second from bottom one is.

L1011

Burtonport!

Also, the second from the top doesn't have a road to it at all...

Amtmann

I quite like the green and black typography on the R and L road signage. I'm reluctant to endorse yellow lettering on N and M signage, as I think the eyes are more drawn to this than to the white. I realise choice is limited by what colours stand out on a green and blue background, and one would want to avoid strong colours bleeding into one another. When you consider that, yellow and green/blue isn't a bad combination I suppose.

Jayuu

I decided to have a go at this and also expanding out from Garret Reil's site and project had a look at what I would like to see in signage both on motorways and in general.

Here are a couple of examples I came up with. I used some of the examples already shown here and also I decided to use the ALLERTA font which I think works really well as a clean crisp font (it also helped that it was Open Source as well!).

Firstly some advance directional signage:

The first thing is that I decided to use the colours for the road types involved on the signage, so in this example because the R442 is a regional road its put into a black on white patch. I think this reinforces the road type of the exiting road. I also think the colour coding and mixed case font for Irish and English works much better from an understanding perspective and negates the need for italics which I think confuse the signs.


This is similar to the first one except to show how I would indicate where a secondary route is accessible. I really don't like the current arrangement of the brackets. I think it throws off the design of the signs. I'm not sure whether the white line between the destinations is necessary but I did want some way to indicate the primary route being taken. Note again the use of colour for the road type.


This is an alternative for the above sign where I've put the secondary route designation to the right of the location. I can't make my mind up on whether this is a better option or not. It does make better use of space on the sign should there be a need to indicate more than one secondary route.

Finally for the moment in the advance directional signage is an option for overhead gantries. This may need further refinement.

What I really hate about the old sign here are the inconsistencies on it. Now I know this is one that has been around a while and newer signs may be better but the fact the route numbers, arrows and names are all in different places make the sign really messy. In my version the route numbers are on the same level (although I still have to work out how you would deal with an exit with multiple route numbers!) and the junction number is in the familiar top left position. Also the arrows are consistently at the bottom.
Another thing here is that I think the use of different colour for Irish and English makes it possible to centre all the text on one axis as opposed to centering the overall text but having the Irish and English version start in the same positions.

Amtmann

What software application are people using to redesign the signage?

Jayuu

Just some more examples. These are for route confirmations.


This is the example give by "That username is already in use". My take on it is very similar to him/her with again the use of colour coding and mixed case for Irish and English. The only real difference is that I've incorporated the route numbering into the actual sign as opposed to having in as a bolted on piece at the top. I think it just makes the sign that bit more complete.


And here's an example with secondary route distances. Again I've used the idea of the white line to separate primary and secondary routes in order to drop the horrible brackets which makes the old sign extremely nasty (imho!). Also I've added the actual route numbers to the right of the secondary destinations. What I'm not sure about is whether doing that makes it hard to read the actual distances involved.
The other thing to consider here is what to do when there is no official English language name for a location. I have to say I really hate the current concept of making the italicised version twice the size as in this example. I think it makes the sign completely confusing for tourists. My compromise is to use the Irish name in both colours. It may be redundant but it keeps consistency on the signage.
I know the current sign has been there for a long while so again it may not be an accurate example of what might be put up today in such a place but even so under our current setup I think you'd end with a confusing sign.


This was an alternative to the above image with the secondary routes indicated to the left. The problem here though is what you would do if the secondary route numbers were different lengths. Would you start all the text in the same place or just leave a set gap between the route numbers and the destinations. Are the route numbers necessary at all?

Jayuu

Furet wrote: »

What software application are people using to redesign the signage?

I'm using Photoshop and Google StreetView to get some of my images. I could be a little tider in my overlays of colour on some of the sign but I just want to get the concept across so I'm not spending too much time on making them neat.

Empire o de Sun

using AutoCAD Lt

here an old one I did

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I have two more proposals, this time using Clearview, as used in the States.

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Jayuu wrote: »

Good work. The above is a good comparison of the dreadful and incoherent mess that we have at the moment and how easily it can be fixed.

Stonewolf

MYOB wrote: »

Burtonport!

Also, the second from the top doesn't have a road to it at all...

Well there you go, I'm actually from Donegal and went to school with gaeltacht kids and I had no idea. Nobody calls the place anything but Burtonport (I'm pretty sure people nobody uses the Irish spelling of Arann Mor either).

Honestly, I really don't see the point of having bilingual signs aimed at a monolingual populace.

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Please find attachted two fonts I am using to create these signs.

1. Transport - Used on UK road signs. Also used in Ireland, but butchered with CAPS for English and Italics for Irish, which the font was not designed for. Please note that Transport does not support fadas.

2. Clearview - Used in the States

Empire o de Sun

That username is already in use. wrote: »

Please find attachted two fonts I am using to create these signs.

1. Transport - Used on UK road signs. Also used in Ireland, but butchered with CAPS for English and Italics for Irish, which the font was not designed for. Please note that Transport does not support fadas.

2. Clearview - Used in the States

That's not clearview,

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Clearview_sample.svg

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Empire o de Sun wrote: »

That's not clearview

Do you have Clearview you can upload here?

Empire o de Sun

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Can you attach a TTF or OTF?

mackerski

Others have hinted at it, but let's examine from first principles why we are doing this in the first place. Firstly, there are countries that have multilingual signs, and many (Wales) make an utter pig's ear of it. I'm not so fond of the Scottish approach either, since they often end up robbing the yellow that drivers have become accustomed to associate with an A-road number. It's worth noting that Ireland, Scotland and Wales are all countries that have a dominant/minority language split and have opted for bilingual signs to accommodate this.

But if we look at many of the countries with several languages, but where the languages are not endangered, we often find that signs are as a rule monolingual, with the occasional translation, usually in brackets, of significant locations on a long-distance route (such as how some, but not all, French road signs include the German spelling of Aachen). From my own observations, monolingual signs are the rule in:

• Belgium
• Luxembourg
• Gaeltacht (oddly enough)
• Italy
• Switzerland

In all of the countries (and the Gaeltacht) listed above, roads are signed in the language local to that area, though with a few twists. In Italy, for instance, Motorway signs are sometimes in Italian even in the German-speaking zone.

I think bilingual signs are an impossible dilemma. The ones we have now are readable (in English) because the typography does indeed draw attention to the English form at the expense of the Irish. As such, they are mere lip-service (and frequently mis-spelt lip-service too).

So if you feel strongly about the place of Irish on the signs, as the OP clearly does, it's no surprise that you would look for ways to grant equal prominence to Irish. We've seen some attempts at this in the thread, and I think some of them actually manage it.

So that's good, right? Not really. Because as I look at the signs that grant parity to both languages I suddenly can't find the information I need as quickly. The road sign no longer functions. This is bad. This is, I am sure, why most countries with a mixture of languages - ones used for practical purposes and usually devoid of baggage - pick the most reasonable language for the area in which the sign is placed and use it.

Today we already do this to some extent anyway. We've already seen an example posted from the Gaeltacht. Place names in the Gaeltacht may now not even be signed in English from outside the Gaeltacht.

A pragmatic way to make signs more readable - whether in English or Irish - would be to explore cases where a similar policy could be used for English language names. Some, like Beaumont, are clearly neither Irish nor English and can without injury to anybody's national pride readily be rendered in a single language, as already happens in some cases. Other places have, during this century, been assigned Irish names that have no basis in tradition - Blanchardstown springs to mind. If it is valid to sign only the original, traditional name of a Gaeltacht town, it must surely be valid to do the same outside the Gaeltacht. There are going to be plenty of cases where this doesn't work, but if Irish names are to gain extra prominence on signs without making the whole sign unreadable, you have to gain the space somewhere.

A further option - certain signs, such as route confirmations, could be erected twice, once in English, once in Irish. We would, of course, have to argue over which one the driver should see first - but that's another day's work.

Jayuu

I've just done my versions of the latest two images (the roundabout and the ads for Sligo/Galway).


I think this was fairly straightforward. The more I do these the more I think there is a case for patching the actual route number is the relevant colour code because thereafter I think you can leave the rest of the sign in its base colour, so you are getting the information you need without odd blocks of colour on it.


This one took a bit of time to work out and I'm still not sure about whether it works. I was trying to be consistent with my earlier version (for the Naas exit) in which I had put my route number of the exit in the top right hand corner.
This then left the problem of how to deal with the secondary routes off the exit. I tried a lot of different things before I decided that again to be consistent I should use the white line to differentiate between primary route and the secondary routes. Once I had done that then I realised that there was no reason why the secondary route destinations and patching had to be the same size so I lowered them down. Again the advantage of this system is that it clearly identifies the route with the destination.
The one thing that I'm not completely happy about is that there is a lot of blue space on the main sign because of the font size used and I didn't want to stretch the font to fill the space. I'm also not sure about the placement of the icon for the ferry. Clearly it has to be beside Dún Laoghaire but I wasn't sure whether the text itself should move to the left to accommodate it. I did decide to patch it in a different colour so that its stands out as different.
Once again I had to make a decision to put Dún Laoghaire on the sign in both colours for consistency. I did have a look at alternatives but I think in the longer term being consistent on a double usage is better.
By the way it could be argued for consistency that both Wexford and Dún Laoghaire on the main signs should also have route numbers beside them like the exit signs but I think that's forgivable in what you are trying to convey here.

Have to say that I'm quite enjoying this exercise and it is showing me that its harder than you think to come up with a consistent usage policy. I'm not completely forgiving the NRA for the messy signs we have now but I guess I'm being a bit more lenient with them.

Carawaystick

Here's an example of the system used in Catalunya
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=41.893908,2.777503&spn=0.004464,0.014892&t=h&z=17&layer=c&cbll=41.893644,2.777963&panoid=Z3ZA372IJjF-0dWD4fpV2g&cbp=12,141.81,,0,2.47

or

http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=41.961273,2.787663&spn=0.002246,0.007446&t=h&z=18&layer=c&cbll=41.961071,2.787526&panoid=Bsh0w_bfwozf57WB7hkZIw&cbp=12,258.53,,0,9.02

This has some split to show it's multilingual
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=42.034935,2.836812&spn=0.008973,0.029783&t=h&z=16&layer=c&cbll=42.035021,2.836903&panoid=QSg60lgAPAHTqwM1jn34YQ&cbp=12,64.86,,0,1.43

but they're not a great system. tried to find a sign with perpignan/perpinya on it but no luck.

Empire o de Sun

That username is already in use. wrote: »

Can you attach a TTF or OTF?

There is all the USA Fonts, Highway Gothic Series and the new Clearview Series.

Nuttzz

ardmacha wrote: »

Why are you doing it, then? Keep the thread about sign design, please.
Scottish style proposal 2 is good.

Will do,

Proposal 2 is quite readable compared to proposal 1, however I dont know what is wrong with what we use at the moment

etchyed

Nuttzz wrote: »

Will do,

Proposal 2 is quite readable compared to proposal 1, however I dont know what is wrong with what we use at the moment

Really, you don't? Because I spent a good 5 minutes of my life explaining to you exactly what's wrong with it. It'd be nice for you to at least explain why you disagree, rather than just ignore the reasons that you've been given.

etchyed

Empire o de Sun wrote: »

using AutoCAD Lt

here an old one I did

Interesting to see Irish placenames in that style, but the toll symbol is not good. Red circles indicate prohibition of something.

etchyed

marmurr1916 wrote: »

OT: I can't see much wrong with bilingual road signs in Ireland. Most people, even Irish speakers, will be looking for the English language name for their destination. The present system, where these are in a clear, easy to read font, in capital letters makes it easy to see them even when driving at high speed.

Mixed case is easier to read at high speeds. That's not a matter of opinion.

Arabic speakers clearly look at the Arabic script, non-Arabic speakers look at the Latin script.

AFAIK, this doesn't cause any problems in those countries.

I think you're underestimating the difference between filtering out writing in an entirely different script and filtering out writing in a different language in the same script as your own.

marmurr1916

etchyed wrote: »

Mixed case is easier to read at high speeds. That's not a matter of opinion.

I think you're underestimating the difference between filtering out writing in an entirely different script and filtering out writing in a different language in the same script as your own.

It's never been a problem for me or for anyone I've ever known. What percentage of people even look at the Irish version of the name? I doubt that very many foreign tourists take much notice either, at least not when they're actually looking at the signs for for directional purposes.

etchyed

Jayuu wrote: »

I decided to have a go at this and also expanding out from Garret Reil's site and project had a look at what I would like to see in signage both on motorways and in general.

Here are a couple of examples I came up with. I used some of the examples already shown here and also I decided to use the ALLERTA font which I think works really well as a clean crisp font (it also helped that it was Open Source as well!).

I don't really understand why you've decided to use a random font like this. There are a relatively small number of fonts used for roadsigns around the world, examples of which are in this post by Empire o de sun. These fonts are designed specifically for road signage. I'm not a typography expert but I'd imagine there are sound reasons why authorities don't go about just using Arial or whatever takes their fancy. So I think it makes more sense to use a roadsign-specific font, and I don't see what the problem is with Transport to be honest.

Firstly some advance directional signage:

The first thing is that I decided to use the colours for the road types involved on the signage, so in this example because the R442 is a regional road its put into a black on white patch. I think this reinforces the road type of the exiting road.

Under the current rules, coloured patching is not used on motorways in Ireland. Where patching is used (ie national and regional roads) the destinations are patched, not just the route numbers. Patching route numbers alone was an early implementation of patching rules and where you see it on relatively new signs, it's wrong.

I'm not entirely sure I agree with the blue-only-on-motorways rule. The French use the colour of the route the exit leads to rather than simply blue. But for consistency with the signage on, for example, dual-carriageway N-roads, I'd patch all the destinations too. Those little white and green route number patches are a bit small to be noticed.

This is similar to the first one except to show how I would indicate where a secondary route is accessible. I really don't like the current arrangement of the brackets. I think it throws off the design of the signs. I'm not sure whether the white line between the destinations is necessary but I did want some way to indicate the primary route being taken. Note again the use of colour for the road type.

This is an alternative for the above sign where I've put the secondary route designation to the right of the location. I can't make my mind up on whether this is a better option or not. It does make better use of space on the sign should there be a need to indicate more than one secondary route.

I think your dislike of brackets is very much an aesthetic thing. IMO they show more clearly and intuitively the meaning intended, i.e. you'll take the N33 for a while to get to the N2. So I don't really like these ideas.

Finally for the moment in the advance directional signage is an option for overhead gantries. This may need further refinement.

What I really hate about the old sign here are the inconsistencies on it. Now I know this is one that has been around a while and newer signs may be better but the fact the route numbers, arrows and names are all in different places make the sign really messy. In my version the route numbers are on the same level (although I still have to work out how you would deal with an exit with multiple route numbers!) and the junction number is in the familiar top left position. Also the arrows are consistently at the bottom.
Another thing here is that I think the use of different colour for Irish and English makes it possible to centre all the text on one axis as opposed to centering the overall text but having the Irish and English version start in the same positions.

While this also has elements of your proposals that I don't like (patched R-road number, yellow box around junction number and motorway number - why?!!!) you're right about the inconsistency and I like the way you've tidied it up.

Jayuu wrote: »

Much as I disagree with your ditching of the brackets for aesthetics' sake, I can't help but like this. It does show very clearly what's what.

Sorry for all the image quoting and sorry to Jayuu if this seems like an attack. I appreciate they will have taken time to put together and there are some good ideas there. Hope you can take the criticism how it's intended.

etchyed

marmurr1916 wrote: »

It's never been a problem for me or for anyone I've ever known. What percentage of people even look at the Irish version of the name? I doubt that very many foreign tourists take much notice either, at least not when they're actually looking at the signs for for directional purposes.

I realise this. But that's because Irish signs demote the Irish to a bizarre oblique mess that's easily ignored.

I don't think you understand my point, which is that your comparison with Arabic signage makes no sense. It's much easier to filter the Arabic text than it is to filter out Welsh text on Welsh road signs.

That's why colour differentiation, a la Scotland, is the best option in my opinion.

marmurr1916

etchyed wrote: »

I realise this. But that's because Irish signs demote the Irish to a bizarre oblique mess that's easily ignored.

I don't think you understand my point, which is that your comparison with Arabic signage makes no sense. It's much easier to filter the Arabic text than it is to filter out Welsh text on Welsh road signs.

Unless you're an Arabic speaker, which the majority of people in Arabic-speaking countries tend to be.

etchyed wrote: »

That's why colour differentiation, a la Scotland, is the best option in my opinion.

Have seen it in real life. Don't think it's all that great.