Truthiness In Advertising

We have been charmed by some of the signage here in Tunisia. The primary language in this country is French, the secondary language is Arabic. People who speak Arabic fluently will quickly point out that they are speaking Tunisian here. It's a different dialect of Arabic than spoken in the other middle eastern countries.

I've been joking with ex-pats that instead of 'Spanglish' (which Texans are used to), here in Tunisia they have 'Frarabic'. You'll hear someone speak a sentence and three words will be in French, three in Arabic.

Because of the preponderance of French in the spoken landscape, you see street signs and businesses who post notices in recognizable script. Many of these are actually French, but because I can read the text, I read it as English...

This actually leads to some interesting and charming miscues. But some of the translations (or English style signs) provide little to no clue as to the businesses they are advertising.

Case in point:

The Salon of The Fast Food
We waited until dinner time last night and walked the five or six blocks down to try "The Salon of The Fast Food". What we found when we arrived were two things. One was a huge family party going on in half of the facility. Some kind of birthday or anniversary. There were a lot of revelers of all ages and the usual party detritus.

We flagged down a waiter and asked where we could go to order dinner. He was very surprised and then ushered us into a small bar area. We indicated that we wanted to eat, not drink and smoke. He shook his head mournfully. There is no food service at the Salon of the Fast Food.

Those words, in English, spell 'eating establishment with a drive through' to me. In this context, not so much.

It's expecting a little too much to have 'truth in advertising' when you're reading a sign in a language that they don't even use... I'm guessing that "the" (with an accent grav) means "tea" instead of "the". Then it would have said, 'Salon of Tea, fast food'. Which might mean a cafe that serves drinks and can be rented for parties. Perhaps that makes it closer to reality.

We took our dinner business elsewhere. We just strode a few blocks East and found another restaurant to throw our money at. No problems.

Along with the signs that 'doan mean what we thin they mean' [insert Inigo Montoya's voice here], there are also signs that have meanings that are not clear to the proprietors who don't speak, or spell, in English.

Case in point:

At some point, an English speaking person had to tell this proprietor what this sounds like when spoken in our language. But maybe by that point in time, they were so invested in signage that changing was cost prohibitive? I'm going to choose to believe that's how it works. Not that this is truth in advertising.

--Sandee Wagner