The International Trade Class (Year 1) of the Escuela Profesional Javeriana, took pictures of the English language used by high-street shops in Madrid. They tweeted them using the hashtag #shoppingepj. Some students tested the new Google translate App. Then, they analysed the information.

1. Street commercial signs
We decided to go to Malasaña and Fuencarral
because it is a commercial area with a lot of
tourists. At first, we found a hotel in the street
called Manuela Malasaña with a nice hotel, and
in the cafeteria they have a window sign in
English staying “Network media search
innovation website chatting”.
This sign is in English because their target
clients are foreign people. Then, we moved
to Fuencarral Street where they are lots of
shops with discounts and sales, we took
some photos of the window signs offering
discount on some clothing units, like “Sale
on Fire”, this signis in English because they
want to attract tourist people.
Afterwards, we kept walking and
we took a photo of a cosmetic
store for woman, this was a store
sign staying “LUSH FRESH
HANDMADE COSMETICS”, its
target clients are mainly foreign
tourist and it seems like a very
nice store.

2. Walking on Fuencarral Street on the way to
Gran via Avenue we run into this cute little
store which specialized in Candle. This candle
shop has a store sign at the street “CANDLE
SHOP”. This sort of store
is focusing ingetting those
tourist people walking
around Fuencarral Street.
Then, at the end of Fuencarral street we
stopped byone of the mostimportant cosmetic
store called Mac where we could tell their
clients were all foreign people, we did not see
anyone from Spain. “SERVICIOS DE
MAQUILLAJE” “CITAS Y CURSOS DE
MAQUILLAJE” and “DEMOSTRACIONES
EN EL MOMENTO”.
We have learned that Madrid is a very multicultural city, especially
downtown Madrid and what is more in Fuencarral where all the signs
in the shops are designed to attract those people visiting Madrid.

3. SHOPPING SIGNS
The signs that we chose were in the streets of the centre of Madrid. There
are many designs in this signs with different colours, fonts...
The target of this signs is to reach a larger number of people who want the
different products. Wecan find this signs in English
because it is the most important language around
the worldand a lotof people can readthe signs.The
vocabulary is easy to understand for people who
don´t have a high level of English.
Wechosetwodifferent options of businessthatuse
English in their marketing. Now we are going to
explain our two choices:
Firstly, we can see a ZARA’s mannequin with a T-
shirt that said: “sales”. Zara is a Spanish clothing
and accessories retailer and it is the flagship chain
store of the Inditex group, the world's largest apparel retailer. Zara use
English because it has shops around the world.
Next, we can see the shop: TEA HOME,
that it’s a small shop of tea. Her name is
in English, because the English is the
most important language of the world
and it can attract more people.
Our conclusion is that the shops using
English because it’s the most important
language, the smalls shops like “TEA
HOME” us that because they are in
streets with a lot of tourist, and shops
like ZARA use that because they are a multicultural shops. About the
project,wethink thatit’s an interesting experience useTwitter for different
thing.

4. Last Thursday we went to Fuencarral.
We decided to go there because there
are a lot of tourists, shops and
advertising. We took a lot of photos, in
particular to clothes shops. There are
people who aren't from Spain and the
English is the international language, so
it's the easiest way to people to
understand that. It is a good target for
shops. People who work in that type of
shops need to know English like the
second language because there are
more and more tourists. The more the
shop is in the centre of the city, the
more people have to know English.
Besides, we think that they are in English because there are shops
which are created abroad.
We have analysed the signs and we think that it is a way to start
to be more international. There are a lot of foreign companies
since Spain is in the UE.
To sum up, we think that it will be very useful in the future to help
people to be ready to work in England or any countries where
people speak English.
We learnt to use in a different way the social networks because
this work taught us to use them for our English knowledge.
Another thing we have learned is to work as a team. We taught
ourselves some words that we didn´t know.

5. Shopping signs
We chose a store called “Blanco” which is a Spanish store inside
of the Inditex group and they would like to expand their products
to the international market, for example if the people of the other
countries come to Spain they want to understand the information
advices in order to buy the typical clothes in Spain.
Then we chose the Official Store of the Real Madrid because, this
institution is not only a team, It´s an international brand which
commerce around the world and for this reason all the advices are
always in English to reach more people.

6. In conclusion, we think that the use of English for writing signs is
highly important in marketing. In this way, sales can be improved
writing the signs in English because the most people understand
English, but only a few of the tourist can read Spanish.
In addition, if we use a universal language, it will help us in the
fight for a position in this globalized market.

7. We walked by San Bernardo street and when we arrived to Gran Vía we
turned to the left until Fuencarralstreet, and those are the signs we found
in English:
1. Bus tickets, maps, information
notes, etc.
Those signs are made to the
touristpeople with the target to
guide them and make their visit
and thecommunication as much
comfortable as is possible.
2. Meal and offer signs.
We normally find those signs outside the restaurant close to the
door. Usually those signs are
boards where is written the meal
of the day or the offer of the day.
Those meals/those offers are
written in bright colours with the
objectiveto let them knowand try
to make them come in. The meals
are in English because of tourists,
for them to understand and know
what they can eat.

8. 3. Company name.
When we walked on the street, we could realize that most of the
companies’ names are in other languages (majority in English). You
can find this in films, restaurants, pubs, etc.
Some of them sell products fromother countries, others are foreign
franchises and the rest use another language just because is more
commercial, although sometimes the name doesn´tmakeany sense.
Example: Pans and company (sartenes y compañía), Birdman
(hombre pájaro), etc.
4. Google translate app.
Thanks to the new technologies we can translate any sign at any
moment in any language. This is thanks to the google translate app
which allow us to translate the signs in 3 different ways:
- Theordinaryone: writing
the text you want to translate.
- The second one by
means of the camera, that on
having fixed the sign we just
have to select the language
and automatically it translates.
This example is in the picture
we show you.
- And the third one, by
audio.