Public notice with local wisdom Using vernacular/local language

Well, this public notice was published by the Local Police of Maros Regency in 2016. Maros
Regency is a regency that is located in the north direction of Kota Makassar. The notice itself is located
around 5 kilometers from the regional border between Maros Regency and Kota Makassar and as we
can see the landscape that the notice was upheld on the bank of the traffic lane which is the left side
lane from the north leading to south or leading to Kota Makassar and located just before a Y junction
with 2 lanes ahead. The right lane is the lane of the main road to Kota Makassar and the left one is the
alternative lane.

As a public notice with local wisdom it shall be wiser to know the rough translation of every part
of generic structure that it consists. Therefore, the translation is presented on the table below:

Generic Structure Text Translation

Attention gather Ingin Menghindari Macet..!! Want to avoid the jam!!

Information 1 (main) Lewatki’ di jalur alternatif Please pass through the

Information 2 (additional)
alternative lane
Moncongloe-Daya/BTP-Antang- Moncongloe-Daya/BTP-Antang-
Hertasning Hertasning (Places or areas that
the alternative lane reaches or
heads)
 Generally the notice is written in Indonesian language, only one word/phrase of it that
originated form a local dialect of Makassarese-Buginess tribe that we can find on the information
section of the table above, that is “ Lewat ki’…” means “please pass through …, would you?” I will
comment on this phrase in the later paragraph.

The attention gather is pretty attractive both in form of language and in that of font or lay out,
but I think there is a miss choice of punctuation there, that is the using of exclamation mark(!) rather
than using question mark (?) instead which is in English we classify it as question tag so the appropriate
punctuation must be question mark (?).

Let’s see the Information section, there are two sub sections here namely (1. Main Information;
and (2. Additional information. The main information conveys the main message of the notice by
persuading the passenger/driver to take the alternative lane so that they may not be going through the
underway jam. The additional information informs the passenger/driver the places or the areas that the
alternative lane reaches so any passenger that is going to or heading those places or areas that the
notice indicated, can probably follow the alternative lane.

The last is the illustration or the picture on the notice. The picture used in the notice, I think, is
quiet representative but not pretty helpful.