Over recent years, the Da Nang Department of Culture and Sports in coordination with relevant local agencies have paid special heed to detecting and correcting the presentation of foreign languages on billboards and signboards.

A service facility on Bach Dang Street displaying their billboards in foreign languages only

Like many other localities across the country, the city has seen a boom in billboards featuring only foreign languages and/or inappropriate Vietnamese language text to catch the public’s attention. This violates the national Advertisement Law, and has brought about a negative reaction, and it reflects a lack of respect for the national tongue and culture.

The Advertisement Law stipulates that the advertisement content, whether spoken or written, must be in Vietnamese. 

Foreign languages can only be adopted when representing foreign brands, trademarks, proper names or internationalised words which can’t be replaced with Vietnamese. 

In such cases, the signs must use both Vietnamese and a foreign language, and the foreign words must be no more than three-fourths the font size of the Vietnamese words, and placed beneath the Vietnamese words. 

However, in reality, many hotels, restaurants, shops and service providers in the city have displayed their signs which feature foreign words only, or both Vietnamese and foreign languages, but the Vietnamese words are dominated by the foreign ones in size, colour and position.

Also, it is common to see some signs featuring a combination of both Vietnamese and English words.

Along sections of such tourists-packed streets as Ho Xuan Huong and Vo Nguyen Giap, there are many service providers, mainly involved in the beauty care, drinking and eating, displaying their billboards in foreign languages only.

In Ngu Hanh Son alone, in the 1^st quarter of this year, 28 cases violating the Advertisement Law were detected and dealt with.

Meanwhile, in Son Tra District, 10 service providers along the streets of Duong Dinh Nghe and Pham Van Dong recently faced administrative penalties for displaying their billboards featuring South Korean words placed above the Vietnamese words.

These offenders were also required to have words on their billboards corrected.

According to Ms Vo Thi Phuong, the Head of the Son Tra District Culture and Information Office, violations have been mainly attributed to the fact that many service providers have yet to have a thorough grasp of the national Advertisement Law, and the majority of the violators are foreigners.

In an attempt to deal with this matter of concern, the municipal Department of Culture and Sports and the district-level authorities are joining their forces to widely promote the publicity of the Vietnamese Advertisement Law, especially the accurate presentation of Vietnamese and foreign languages on billboards and signboards.

Furthermore, the municipal Department of Investment and Planning has been required to attach leaflets about the presentation of Vietnamese and foreign languages on billboards to new business registration licences so that investors can be well informed of the advertisement regulations, hereby avoiding committing violations.