My recent visit to Belgium (see earlier blog post) led me to reflect on languages.

If you are a train operator in, for example, the Netherlands, Flanders or Norway where the local language is known by a relatively small population (4m - 8m) and by very few others, what do you do when communicating with passengers?

How much do you translate into, say, English?

This is even more complex in Flanders (where you could also use French or German) and Catalonia (where you could also use Spanish).

Pictograms are valuable, although you can't use them for everything.

Putting everything in the local language and another - English, for example - risks devaluing the local language. And the local language is of course fundamental to the culture of the country. Indeed, in some places it is actually a political statement.

The aviation industry uses local language plus English, although its presence in a country is obviously much less pervasive than the railway industry.

The alternative - of using the local language for virtually everything - is an easy option, but many visitors can be put off. Learning another language for a 2-week visit is one thing: doing so for a 2-night business trip is something else!

And I leave you with the thought of a friend in London Underground on a trip to Germany, when his knowledge of German was fairly basic. He knew that Ausgang meant exit - but what about Notausgang? It actually means Emergency Exit, but it carries entirely the wrong message to people like himself!