Another sign about sock areas! This was again a library in Espoo, though a different one than the one we previously discussed. This time our sign is less terse and describes in Finnish, Swedish and English that:
The play area is a SOCK AREA Please take off your shoes.
Followed by a more pictorial representation of "There socks".
Compared to the previous sign, we note several differences:
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The textual content is very homogenous. They all have identical contents, font sizes and emphases. They even all end with a dot! The only thing signaling language dominance relations is the ordering from top to bottom.
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The level of politeness is on par on each message. I discussed this with a trilingual person and they found the Swedish version to be a good translation, and that any extra politeness might be seen as passive aggressive.
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More effort has been used here also outside the language. There is a color border, a pictorial version and the whole thing is laminated.
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The pictorial component is new, perhaps it is aimed to children or people who do not speak even English? I would probably struggle to interpret it without any context, but perhaps if one sees it next to a pile of shoes and children playing with no shoes the message would come across clearly?
All in all, an absolutely delightful sign!