At the bottom of a letter from the post office about my change of address:
If you do not speak English or you do not understand this letter, please take it with you to your local post office for assistance.
At the bottom of a letter from the post office about my change of address:
If you do not speak English or you do not understand this letter, please take it with you to your local post office for assistance.
Long live bureaucracy!
Well, what are they supposed to print it in, Not-English?
When you live in a country where you don’t speak the governmental language, you usually know at least one person who can read things for you. With that little bit printed there, the non-English-speaking recipient’s English-speaking friend can then at least tell them, “Ah, it says you can take it in to the post office if you didn’t actually file this change of address, and someone there can help you with it.”
That’s prolly true, but I also remember when I tried to take the German test to find out which class I was supposed to be in. I could not understand the instructions at all. It’s the absurdity of it that makes me ka-razy.
It brought to mind the pc sign that appeared on shops all over the place for a while there … ‘Guide dogs for the blind welcome in this store’.
I wondered who in the hell their target audience was lol.
I think the people who write things like your letter should be taken out of the small windowless room they clearly live and work in and just be introduced to the outside world … pah!
@wildsoda: it’s not a lot of text. It wouldn’t be that hard to add a translation in a couple of widely spoken languages.
Her in Belgium we have some leaflets that offer information in French, German, English, Arabic, Chinese and Russian. Add Spanish and I guess you’ll come a long long way. Or make the sentence shorter: “Ask for help at the post office” in 10 languages.