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Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Welcome in Amsterdam

The sign, sigh.

I wonder how much effort the translators put into this. All I can say is the following: dear cab drivers, either have a linguist take a look at your concept translation, or lrn2english yourselves. It is obvious that these people were thinking in Dutch during the compiling of this English text. There are a lot of dutch-isms.

From top to bottom:
- Welcome TO Amsterdam,
- On the right you can find the official Amsterdam Central railway station taxi rank/the official taxi rank of Amsterdam Central railway station,
- Maximum or max flag down rate or (less common and natural) flagdown rate,
- Decimals are indicated with periods in English, not with commas. Prices/distances should be (€)X.XX and not (€)X,XX. At least they are consistent with this mistake.
- Make sure the taxi meter is running,
- Maximum tariffs or (yet again, more accurately) rates by July 1 (or July 1st),
- As a customer you may decide yourself which taxi you are going to take/you want to take,
- You are not obligated to take the first taxi in the array/line-up. (I personally would only use row for a queue of people or when it's not about waiting for turns.)
- When present, the taxi host can assist...
- Personally I wouldn't use 'Journey guaranteed' since journey, in my point of view, indicates it's going to take awhile and involves long distances. Aside from that, without the word 'is' in between the subject and past participle, it sounds more like a slogan than a promise or guarantee (haha). Instead I would have made the title say 'Your ride is guaranteed' or 'Rides are guaranteed'.
- Taxis, obviously. Also, I'd use 'allowed' instead of 'permitted', feels more natural.
- Personally, I'd use license plate instead of licence plate. Technically licence is not incorrect—it being Canadian—but it looks like crap.
- Call the National Taxi Complaints Office at/on 0900 202 18 81. Saying 'call me at telephone number' is rather redundant. Hey, look! They wrote "0.13 euro" correct!
- More information regarding traveling by taxi in Amsterdam...
-
You can call the ATCB at...
- ... or visit either of the ATCB offices at Amsterdam Central on platform two or outside in the Noord-Zuidhollands koffiehuis.

Now, when can we expect the reprint?

Cheers,

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