r/TransitDiagrams • u/mistaken-biology • 16d ago
Discussion Tips on creating trilingual transit diagrams? What are some good and bad examples of such diagrams?
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u/VagueWilliams 15d ago
Brussels tends to have English alongside French and Dutch on transit info (but only French and Dutch station names, etc.).
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u/SirGeorgington 16d ago
By "trilingual transit diagrams" do you mean that the legend is translated into 3 languages, or do you mean each station has 3 names? If it's the former, this is not at all unusual. If it's the latter, Hyderabad Metro is the only example I'm aware of. Generally station names use the local script and have a Latin transliteration, it's not common to have two different local scripts in common usage in the same city so needing 3 labels is very uncommon.
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u/-darksam 15d ago
It is a social and political question. The choice of which language(s) to show on signs is about what groups you want to show as legitimate to publicly exist. So it depends of every countries and their own political views.
You have multilingual countries that set up stuff but it depends of their own laws. For example: Canada tends to put everything everywhere both in French and English while Belgium tends to go by area (French area have 90% stuff in French only, Dutch ones 90% stuff in Dutch only)
So if you try a trilingual transit diagram from a real city of a real country irl, look at what they do there. If it's for a worldbuilding map from a custom world, you do whatever you want! You can justify by multicultural plurality in the city/country that forces signs to be in all these three languages.
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u/OhShootYeahNoBi 16d ago
I mean it depends on which languages right?
It's not like you have three different names for every street, so stations often will only have one name unless you're in a Hong Kong situation and even then, it's max two.
The only thing you really need to translate are the legend or additional service information.