Naracoorte Cave - Signage

Typical animal info sign in 4 languages (English, Chinese, Malay and Japanese).

Nice to see. Shame there seems to be a feeling in the UK that using other languages on labels is more likely to confuse the British than help any overseas visitors.

The only UK zoos I can think of with multilingual labels are those (such as Welsh Mountain Zoo) that are bilingual English-Welsh, which doesn't really count as both are local languages. Around Europe a lot of larger zoos (and many small ones) have multiple languages (the local plus English, German and/or French, generally). Just doesn't seem to be the done thing in Britain.


I did rather like the signs at Loro Parque and Jungle Park (Parque las Aguilas) in Tenerife, that were arranged thus:

SCIENTIFIC NAME
Spanish name - English name - German name

Followed by the animal description and whatnot. Seemed to work fine.

Well, I guess that's true. There's still the Japanese though.

Here in the southwest US, many zoo signs (and signs other places) are naturally in English and Spanish. When I was at Parc Des Felins in France, all of the signs were in French and English (but no other European languages like German or Italian).

Oh there is a sizeable Japanese population in Singapore, but you're right in that the signs at Night Safari cater to tourists. The Japanese for some reason really love Night Safari. For the live commentaries on the trams, Japanese is the only language other than English that is offered.

Zoo Negara signs are randomly bilingual

The downside of having too many languages on one sign is that the info presented is usually brief due to space constraints. Well, not that it matters much to most zoo visitors who seem to abhor signs.