Poor English translation and the absence of maps in foreign languages marred the first day of the Taipei International Flora Expo trial run yesterday, making it difficult for foreign visitors to make their way around the expo’s venues, which cover 91.8 hectares.
The expo opened in the Yuanshan Park area yesterday for about 10,000 volunteers, residents of two nearby districts and invited guests from foreign representative offices and international schools in Taipei. The trial period will run for 20 days before the grand opening on Nov 6.
Lu Ye-hui (陸逸慧), a 30-year-old Taiwanese-American who returned this month to attend the celebration of Double Ten Day, lauded the event for its innovation and creative display of flowers and art pieces, but complained about the lack of English maps and translations in the area.
“It’s such a big international event, and you would have thought there’d be English descriptions and maps everywhere,” she said after a visit to the Expo Dome, suggesting that the expo organizing committee should add English translations to all floral displays and directions, and make maps in foreign languages available in the park.
Linda Kuys, a South African expatriate who visited the expo with the Taipei European School, also voiced the same complaints about a lack of English maps around the site and erroneous or quirky English translations.
A sign that reads “Decoding Pavilion of New Fashion” in the park, for example, left Kuys and other foreign visitors confused about the actual content of the pavilion.
In another corner, the organizers wrote “Tradition’s Flowers, New Design’s Village” instead of “traditional flowers” on a sign.
Michael Lee, a Taiwanese businessman who now lives in Singapore, described the flora displays in the park as “incredible,” but said the selected flowers could be more colorful and vivid.
“I was expecting to be visually stunned by lots of vibrant colors, but I didn’t see that at all. The park is big, but there is not a whole lot of life to it,” he said.
Expo spokesperson Ma Chien-hui (馬千惠) acknowledged the lack of English information at the expo sites and said the organizing committee was still in the process of printing the English and Japanese versions of the expo map.
She said the organizing committee would finish the printing of the English and Japanese maps later this month, and would fix the errors in the English translations before the grand opening.
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