One thing that struck me during my first visit to the SeaLife Center was the impressive signage. For a relatively compact education space, there is a lot of information and lots of opportunities to learn at levels that are appropriate to different ages. It’s one of my simpler pleasures watching 2-3 generations of visitors looking at an exhibit and all learning something unique to their interests!
However, having spent a lot of my life living in countries where English is not the main language, I often wonder how well facilities such as ours inform people who don’t speak or read English. I had the chance a month ago to test that question. I was here one weekend and a Malaysian family happened to be discovering the touch tanks. The interpretation staff were doing their usual terrific job explaining and demonstrating the various animals in the tanks (ther animals “speak for themselves” to some extent), but something seemed to be missing. So I spoke to the family in bahasa Malay (which is very similar to bahasa Indonesian, a language I learned over many years) and soon discovered that the children were interpreting to the parents and the parent felt a little uncomfortable with that ‘role reversal’. They were appreciative when I was able to share with them some more information about the ASLC that the children had not yet received and so could communicate that with their kids and restore their parental guidance role!!
That exchange made me curious about how multilingual we are and so I asked Dawn Kimberlin to survey the staff and so far she has discovered that between us we cover the following 12 languages (to varying levels – for example -今私の悪い日本語を話す – you can reverse translate that on Google):
Japanese, Russian, German, Spanish, Danish, Finnish, French, bahasa Indonesia/Malay, Javanese, Tok Pisin (Papua New Guinea) and Korean (via a family connection).
That’s a pretty impressive array of language skills!
And so what might we do with these? I have asked Steve Carrick to work with the marketing and interpretation teams to assess demand and then look at options for brochures and signage in popular languages and perhaps even offer VIP tours with translation? What do you think/ ¿qué te parece?
I look forward to hearing from employees.
ReplyDeleteProviding content in something other than English is an interesting idea, but I would not expect it to even be a break even endeavor. If the idea is just for our message to reach more people, that's one thing, but if we expect to generate additional revenue off this effort, that's entirely different...
ReplyDeleteThe most effective way to allow "signage" to be in so many multiple languages is to use touch-screen displays next to the exhibits. This would allow the content of the signage to be as dynamic as the exhibit itself and would allow as many languages as desired without making the signage look like a foreign language dictionary.
ReplyDeleteWait--shouldn't EVERYONE who comes to the U.S. speak English? Just kidding. But I can't imagine devoting our very limited resources to providing translations for signage. If someone is available to lead tours in another language, great, but that may not be sustainable. I think of this in the 80/20 rule context, except it may be more like 90/10--we can't put more effort into serving a small percent of our visitor population. Another question: which languages do we emphasize? These days it might be Chinese, Japanese and Korean, but changes in the world economy will change who is traveling to AK.
ReplyDeleteI have this book Exhibit Labels, An Interpretive Approach by Beverly Serrell and she describes Bilingual labels as follows;
ReplyDelete"Bilingual labels should not be considered casually, because they add twice the number of words to an exhibition. Bilingual labels are also costly to write, design, and produce. They can double the lead-time needed for developing an exhibition. Creating two sets of labels in two different languages is most warranted when a large proportion of the audience speaks a language different than the local tongue, or when it is the (as in parts of Canada). If there are significant numbers of visitors representing several different languages, bilingual signs will not suffice."
I don't think we get enough foriegn visitors of one specific language to warrant any changes. Plus we are limited on gallery space, time, and money.
If any one wants to read more about what Mrs. Serrell has to say about bilingual labels or anything else about exhibit labels I can loan out my book.
Thanks,
Maybe offering our multilingual services to visitors can be as simple as giving staff an extra badge that tells visitors s/he speaks another language.
ReplyDeletePor ejemplo:
"¿Preguntas? ¡Hablo Español!"
This could be supplemented with a single sign at the ticketing counter (maybe another at the touch tank) that lists all of the languages spoken by staff and tells people to look for staff with special language badges.
These wouldn't have to be fancy or expensive - just printed paper signage and plastic badges with paper inserts. That way we could be flexible as we hire new staff and/or people learn new languages.