1. The petrol station that went straight to HELL

In June 2019, the giant neon Shell sign on Memorial Drive in Cambridge, Massachusetts, lost power to a single letter. The ‘S’ went dark, and a 68-foot city landmark began cheerfully advertising HELL across the Charles River. Drivers did double takes. The station owner admitted it looked rather impressive in the dark. Head office, less amused, asked for the whole sign to be switched off until it was fixed.

2. The restaurant called “Translate Server Error”

A restaurant in China needed English on its sign, so someone ran the Chinese word for “dining hall” (餐厅) through a translation tool. The tool failed, and nobody checked what came back. The error message went up on the shopfront in large, proud letters. Photos of it spread around 2008, reportedly as businesses added English signs ahead of the Beijing Olympics. It became a classic example of machine translation gone wrong, and the linguistics blog Language Log was still writing about it in 2014.

3. Carefully Slide

On a mountain path near Lijiang, in China’s Yunnan province, a warning sign politely tells visitors to “Carefully slide”. Signs like this usually come from the Chinese phrase for “Caution, slippery ground”, which a translation tool can split into “carefully” and “slide”. The result reads less like a warning and more like an invitation. Nobody has confirmed whether it’s encouragement or a dare.

4. The goods train to Hell

Hell is a real village in Norway, and the freight shed at its railway station carries a sign reading “Hell Gods-Expedition”. It sounds like a heavy metal album. In fact, it’s old-fashioned Norwegian for “goods handling”. The name has nothing to do with eternal damnation, either. It comes from an Old Norse word for a cave. The shed no longer handles freight, but the sign is still up.

5. The most honest street corner in town

One photographer spotted a street sign for Cemetery St. with a “Dead End” sign right beside it. Technically, it’s only telling you the road doesn’t go anywhere. Philosophically, it’s covering rather more ground.