Brunnen

I've got a mango in my pocket

I know the point of this story but I'm not sure if I manage to create a systematic, interesting plot that leads there. The point of this story is to talk about translations in wrappings with the text "ingredients", but I'll start with a mango in my pocket.

I got tired of apples and pears so I went on to buy a mango. Since I don't have a driver's licence, I'm usually dependent on a nice bag where I can put my things when I go cycling. This time I had not taken my usual bag with me so I needed to figure out something. I finally decided to stick the mango to one of the pockets of my jacket, and I was happy with that.

This incident just made me slightly sad: imagine if I had taken a huge plastic bag for a single mango (there are no small plastic bags available in the major supermarkets around here); that would have been enormous waste of natural resources. This thought, horrifying on its own, led me to the next one: packages and other wrappings have expanded so much recently. You buy a yoghurt in a beautiful tetra, and soups ready to be thrown to the microwave with a plastic plate. And it seems like the trend is moving towards even more plastic. That's non-organic stuff, which is really bad.

From the scenes of huge packages around cookies, carrot soup and even bread, my thoughts then finally shifted towards the linguistic perspectives of package materials. In fact, the diversity of languages might be one (big or small) reason for even greater amount of wrapping. Look at any chocolate bar and you see text all over the paper. Bien sûr, the primary function is to protect and conserve the product from heat, sunshine, dirt and bacteria, but the paper also needs to give information to consumers on ingredients. Sometimes not only on ingredients, but also on competitions, consumer service et cetera. Text is important, and the bigger the print the more attractive the product. The fact that our world does not speak one language only might be a partial reason for all that waste. Rubbish indeed.

Some linguistic relatives have managed to co-operate across borders and have created wonderful art pieces of flash language coding. If you ever visit any Scandinavian (or more precisely, Fenno-Scandian) country, have a look at some tooth paste tubes. You'll see something like SE/N/DK, followed by "Ingredienser". And the rest, oh well, you cannot really be sure whether it's Swedish, Norwegian or Danish. It's all mixed! Flashes everywhere, all the way through the text.

This one is from a tube of Colgate toothpaste: Barn/Børn under 6 år enbart/kun använda/bruke en mängd tandkräm motsvarende til storleken/størrelsen på en ärta/ært. For att undvika/modvirke at tandkrämen/tandpastaen sväljs/sluges bør en vuxen/voksen deltage ved tandborstningen.

Hmmm... I know that texts on any package of daily products are not the most error-free examples of any language. But still, what's the point of this mingle? Now this text that basically gives a piece of advice concerning children using tooth paste, is a total mix of irregularities. Who has chosen which words are too different in Danish and Swedish to be understood in one of these languages only? Why does the text provide two words for "child" (barn and børn), whereas it assumes that every Swede would realize that 'for' actually means 'för' (for in English), not the past tense of fara, to drive (fara, far, for, farit). Or that 'ved' actually means 'vid'.

I assume this question relates to the study of making connections in brain - linguistic-neurological research. Ftr ll, hmn brn s sch wndrfl sstm tht mst ppl r bl t rd ths txt wth n prblm vn thgh 'm nt sng n vwls. So get rid of the flashes in packages, save space, plastic, print and money - and trust the people. Anyone who can brush their teeth knows that voksen is vuxen. Before that happens, I would however like to thank those companies that have at least started with the flashes. That's far better than patriotically disposed, separate texts in pure Swedish, Danish and Norwegian. Tack så mycket. Mange tak. Tusen takk.

posted by Anicko @ 7:13 AM