We’ve got a couple of short articles for you this month, both tackling issues that can hamper – as opposed to enhance – your communications with your customers.

Best wishes for the Autumn!

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Should you translate collateral in-house?

Many organisations – large and small – prefer to translate their marketing collateral using their “in-country resources”.

On the face of it, that makes sense. After all, local representatives know about the product or service. They know the local market, too. Theoretically, they’re in the perfect position to reconcile the two!

But let’s take a closer look. When we talk about “in-country resources”, we’re usually talking about local sales teams or distributors.

This raises a number of questions:

First: If the sales team are translating the marketing materials – who’s doing the selling?

Second: Are sales team members also writers? With the best will in the world, if they can’t write, they shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the organisation’s marketing material – you don’t want brochures that read like bad flat-pack furniture-assembly instruction sheets!

Third: Is producing a beautiful piece of copy their main priority? Or is doing their own job at the top of their list?

Fourth: Sales teams may prefer to emphasize local-market requirements and priorities, rather than adhering to agreed organisation-wide branding strategies and messaging (many of our readers will already be aware that this is a significant issue, and if not controlled, can result in mis-positioning of your brand in a target sector).

We’ve found that organisations ask in-house resources to carry out this work not so much because of budgetary constraints, but because of (a) a misplaced belief that their own personnel know best what the organisation needs, and (b) time pressure.

The trouble is, the cost of correcting poorly written promotional copy is usually more than it would have cost to get professionals to transcreate it in the first place. And that’s before calculating the on-costs incurred by collateral damage to the brand.

Let’s take a look at a real-life example:

A well-known business broadsheet decided to launch their brand-new online service for non-English readers in Europe with ads targeting French and German speakers in particular.

But the advertising concept they decided to use was quintessentially British, as were the visuals. Not necessarily a problem in itself, because the paper’s reputation was, in any case, quintessentially British. But definitely something that needed sensitive handling.

We advised them of the issue, and suggested either reworking the concept, or taking a very thoughtful (and imaginative) approach to the copy to ensure that it resonated with their target audiences. Not enough time, they cried! They were in a hurry; they’d get their own overseas people to do it…

A few days later and a panicked advertising team were banging on our door, having been dragged over the coals by an irate senior management. Not being specialists, their French colleagues had provided a very literal translation of the ad execution. It was difficult to read, made references to unfamiliar concepts, and contained superlatives (in the target market, and especially by the target audience, superlatives are considered to be in – very – poor taste). Could we re-translate it, please?

The problem is a common one, and easy to explain: untrained individuals become so engrossed in the (relatively unfamiliar) process of translation that they forget that a “translation” as such is NOT what’s required. What’s required is, at the end of the day, effective advertising (or marketing, or PR) copy! Copy that makes a positive impression!

So next time you’re thinking of asking a colleague overseas to translate your copy, it could be worth stepping back and double-checking that their skills do match your priorities…

How do you talk to your customers?

No matter how independent-minded or maverick you are, working in a company – small or large – means that eventually, you become involved in that company’s culture and preoccupations.

Consequently, it’s easy to fall into the trap of talking to your customers as if they too are familiar with your products and services, your corporate vision and even your internal processes!

You know what I mean: you lace your language with corporate jargon. You use acronyms. You refer to products by their short, obscure in-house labels rather than their standard names. In short, you fail to explain either the product, or the service, or the relationships between them in language anybody can understand.

That kind of behaviour can be confusing for suppliers, let alone customers! To keep customers coming back, clarity is key. It’s no secret that many of the most respected premium brands keep their product ranges and service offerings deliberately simple.

Simple means they’re easier for customers to compare. And easier for your sales team to explain. Above all, it’s easier for your entire workforce to stay focused on the customer when they’re not bogged down in remembering the minor differences between product AZB3293-KK3 and product AZB3293-KT9.

If your workforce have to concentrate to tell your products and services apart, it’s much more likely that they’ll fall into the trap of corporate shorthand. It starts in-house, but soon starts to show up in conversations with suppliers and eventually with customers, too.

We’ve all been guilty of it – language is power, and jargon indicates that the speaker belongs to a group of “in”-people. Unfortunately, jargon doesn’t sell anything to anybody – it was never designed to. Jargon is simply a form of shorthand communication between close colleagues. It only works if those close colleagues share a clear understanding of precisely what the jargon means (“define your terms”, as good teachers like to say!).

But jargon tends to proliferate (because everybody wants to be part of the “in”-crowd). Which means that soon, it starts to be mis-used. Soon, you can’t rely on clear, shared definitions any more. Which means communicating with colleagues becomes difficult.

Think how much more difficult suppliers and – here’s the crunch – customers will find it!

Third-party reviews of your sales and marketing language can help. The third-party reviewers must be genuinely independent, however, and must be highly market-oriented. Management consultants are sometimes asked to play this role – an entirely inappropriate use of their skills, because they have jargon of their own, and in any case, they’re approaching your organisation from precisely the wrong direction – as “super-senior managers” rather than “am I interested? yes/no” customers.

To keep your customers interested, keep your language clear!

Howler of the month!

We’ve got some gems for you this month:

… such as the Coors slogan ‘turn it loose’, translated into Spanish as… yes, well, you can probably imagine.

Who cares if the stewardess won’t smile? The brochure promises “Wide boiled aircraft for your comfort”!

Even mountains have feelings. From a sign on a windy road in the Himalayas: “Be mild on my curves”.

From a hotel in Munich, Germany: “In your room you will find a minibar which is filled with alcoholics”

Drunkards should be careful – a sign at a wadi in Oman warns that “Drowning accidents are now popular”.

But linguistic infelicities are not confined to foreign parts:

A small hotel in Cornwall asks: ” Will any guest wishing to take a bath please make arrangements to have one with Mrs. Harvey”.

Although foreign parts definitely have the best:

A sign at a hotel in Budapest: “Forbidden to hang out of hotel window. Person which do so will be charge for clean up mess on footpath”. Hm…

And finally, life wouldn’t be complete without the joys of great gastronomy. On the menu of a restaurant in Yaroslav, Russia, you’ll find “Lorry driver soup”. Only topped by a menu in Switzerland that proudly offers “Half a lawyer with prawns”.

Now that’s how I like my lawyers!

I’d like to subscribe…

For decades, the Apple user interface has always been characterised by a standard approach: a file-centric approach. Ask an Apple user what application they used to produce a particular file and they often won’t be able to tell you – for them the application is subsumed beneath the UI’s focus on the actual data. Which is why the Finder has always enjoyed such pride of place – the Finder is where it all happens.

Actually, the difference from Windows is not that gigantic – many Windows users are just as confused about the difference between the operating system and the applications that run on the operating system. Ask a Word user what they used to produce a text document and more often than not they’ll say something like “oh yes, well, I use Microsoft Windows, you know”. Clearly the graphical user environment encourages a seamless merging of experiences – when it works well, applications become almost invisible. It’s only when it doesn’t work that the differences between applications become significant.

Apps, schmapps…

Now all that has changed – with the advent of the app. Suddenly the application is everything, and it’s the operating system that’s disappeared into the background. What’s even more amusing is that the concept of Finder has also more or less disappeared. I am talking, of course, about Apple’s mobile platform, the new iOS that runs under the bonnet (that’s hood to you, U.S. readers) of the iPhone and the iPad – and soon, if the rumours are to be believed, of the MacBook Air and other impending products.

In Windows, Microsoft had already made strenuous – if ultimately futile – efforts to discourage users from accessing Windows Explorer. In fact, they relegated Windows Explorer to the Accessories subfolder of the Programs folder in a real effort to bury it completely. Ironically, Explorer has made a major comeback in the latest version of Windows, Windows 7.

But in newly mobile AppleLand, the Finder is nowhere to be found – in fact the many different apps available for the iPhone platform are each more or less obliged to maintain their own little walled gardens wherein their own individual collection of files must reside. Recent system updates have allowed a modicum of sharing between different apps, but let’s be clear: it’s not exactly plain sailing.

Empowered developers?

This shift in philosophy is absolutely fascinating. It’s been hugely empowering for developers, of course – the most popular apps effectively create their own little worlds in which users will happily spend a lot of time, building up habits and a concomitant devotion to the app that can only benefit the developer in the long run.

But where’s Microsoft? Why isn’t the Great White Shark pointing out just how amusing it is that Apple – of all system developers – has suddenly “seen the light” and moved over to an app-centric approach? An approach, in short, that has hitherto been associated most closely with Microsoft and the legions of software developers who wrote and still write for Microsoft’s various Windows platforms. What an opportunity for an “I told you so” moment!

Instead, mesmerised and possibly terrified by the amazing – and long-lasting – effects of the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field, nobody at Microsoft appears to have noticed this fundamental, earth-shaking shift. Or if they have, they certainly haven’t made very much noise about it…

Welcome to wordFitness, the eZine from The Word Gym. In this issue, we discuss the relevance of creative translation – by which we mean the translation of creative material, including all that touchy-feely advertising and marketing copy that sells your brand, products and services to your customers and the general public. What makes it different from “normal” translation?

We also look at how you work with your in-country reviewers – that is, the guys and gals who have to review high-profile creative copy intended to sell or market your company, goods or services abroad. What are the pitfalls? How can you make life easier for them?

This is a milestone year for us as we celebrate our 20th anniversary in business. Where does the time go?

Enjoy the summer sun!

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Creative translation: the relevance of relevance

Recently, I was talking to a friend who’s also a director of an international company dealing with agricultural products.

He was asking with some interest what The Word Gym does, and posed the following question: “How do you manage to get across the relevance of what you do to your clients and would-be clients?”

I’ll be honest – it stopped me in my tracks. Here am I, a seasoned project manager, experienced in dealing with complex promotional projects targeting multiple languages and cultures, and ready to tell anybody what we do and how we do it. But what is it – what is it really? - that makes our work relevant to translation buyers?

Wikipedia has a nice, tight definition of relevance: “A thing is relevant if it serves as a means to a given purpose”.

Almost all our work over the past 20 years has involved copy – i.e. words intended to market or sell a brand, product or service to a specific target audience in a specific market sector. Clients come to us because their target audience and market sector (or segment) is international – they need to communicate the benefits of their brand, product or service to audiences in different countries and cultures.

There: clearly our clients have a well-defined purpose. The relevance of our service is that we help our clients fulfill that purpose. So what’s the problem?

The trouble is, one of the really, really important things we do as part of our helpful, “relevant” service is assess the relevance of the client’s copy to the intended target market. This is where things get complicated, because many of our clients are not wordsmiths, and explaining the relevance of our analysis to them is often a challenge.

The relevance of relevance

First, there’s cultural relevance. Take a simple example we’re all familiar with: the fact that an ad developed for the UK won’t necessarily work in the USA (and vice versa). They’re two distinct cultures, even though they share a language.

Rewriting finely honed copy in another language can throw up more “relevance” challenges. For its effect, a campaign (not just the copy, but the entire look and feel) usually relies on key themes, carefully selected to reinforce specific brand values associated with the company, product or service that’s the focus of the campaign.

But the themes (even the colours!) may not appeal to different target cultures in the same ways – and a clever piece of wordplay may have no direct equivalent in the target language. Which means some ingenious cross-cultural “relevance manipulation” is required.

Demographic relevance may vary, too: 15-25 year olds in one country are not necessarily doing, saying or amused by the same things as 15-25 year olds in another. The planet is not yet 100% homogeneous!

My friend was very intrigued, as his own company operates internationally. He started to question how we communicate these issues to clients: “… while I know my senior colleagues will understand where you’re coming from, I’m not sure the folk tasked with securing language services will necessarily understand the differentiation you’re making between traditional translation services and what you guys do.”

He’s right. It’s not easy to help organisations understand - at the appropriate level – that copy relevance is crucial when they’re spending budget on an international campaign. That’s why we like to deal with senior management - they generally understand the risks, but also the rewards.

Not surprisingly, organisations want their budgets to stretch as far as possible. But if the person purchasing the language services does not understand exactly what they are buying, they will not be comparing like with like (cf.wordFitness issue 1 - How to choose a translation agency).

Let’s be clear: traditional translation methods (“just translate it”) are not relevant to this kind of material.

Machine translation is even less effective – machines don’t do relevance (or elegance, for that matter)!

Asking in-country sales offices to write the copy is fraught with issues (do they have the relevant copywriting skills? Are they going to stay on-message? Are they clear about the campaign goals, or do they have their own intentions?). That’s not the same thing as arguing that transcreated copy should not be reviewed by in-country personnel – their knowledge of the market is superior, they’re in a good position to assess “relevance”. But the sensible senior manager is always aware that multiple agendas are in play.

Which is why we offer another “relevant” service: our in-country liaison service. We save our clients time and money by talking to their overseas colleagues in their own language and swiftly resolving campaign-related issues. Many is the time that a simple telephone call by one of our team members has obviated a lengthy exchange of e-mails by clarifying an issue based on pure misunderstanding.

I remember once speaking to a furious in-country reviewer whose towering rage was entirely due to frustration: she had been trying to discuss with the marcomms company – in English – a very simple, single-word issue, but lacked the vocabulary to explain her relatively subtle point. The apparently major problem was solved in three minutes.

So what is relevant? Organisations that are serious about using honed, relevant copy to promote their brands and products abroad need to engage with specialists who know how to produce solutions that work.

How to review transcreated copy

Once your carefully conceived advertising or marketing campaign has been transcreated, how do you make sure it’s “fit for purpose”?

Many organisations sensibly ask their in-country personnel to take a look at the translated copy, to make sure it reads well and doesn’t contain silly errors.

But there are few caveats:

Caveat 1

You’re asking non-specialists to review and proofread a piece of high-profile creative work. They will have varying degrees of skill and experience in doing this. Sometimes things will get missed; sometimes they’ll make poor judgement calls. Always work closely with your translation provider to double-check any amendments and make sure that the changes are genuine improvements.

Caveat 2

Ban the word “corrections” from your correspondence. Reviewer’s changes are not necessarily “corrections”: they may improve the copy (in which case, we’re the first to applaud them!); they may just represent personal preference (synonyms); they may even introduce (rather than correct) errors. If you’re working with a transcreation specialist, there shouldn’t be much to “correct”, although the reviewer may still want to make changes. Again, consult your translation provider to make sure the changes work.

Caveat 3

Unless you have provided your in-country reviewer with a proper campaign brief (concept, core messages, target audience, tone of voice, etc.), they will almost certainly apply their own criteria and agenda, which will not necessarily correspond to the on-brief brand messaging.

Caveat 4

Give your in-country reviewers a timetable well in advance: they’re not going to do a good job if they haven’t been forewarned and have to squeeze yet another unexpected job into their busy schedules.

Caveat 5

Where possible, make sure the reviewer has appropriate qualifications – i.e. is familiar with the product or service, and of the appropriate rank to make informed decisions about the copy and take full responsibility for those decisions. The last thing you need is a last-minute hold-up because the in-country CEO has belatedly caught sight of the concept and doesn’t like it… Oh yes, it happens. Really.

Caveat 6

There is some doubt over the advisability of sending reviewers the source documentation for comparison with the transcreated copy. On the positive side, assuming they have a reasonable command of the source language, they can compare the overall intention and effect. On the negative side, the fact of making the comparison can sidetrack reviewers down a kind of academic blind alley: instead of assessing the copy as a carefully crafted piece of work intended specifically for the target market, they start “correcting” the translated work so that it reads as a closer, more literal translation of the original – losing all impact and potency in the process. Yes, really. We’ve seen it. That’s human nature for you…

Howler of the month!

This month, it’s a summer smorgasbord of random goodies that really tickled our fancy:

A sign at Budapest zoo:
“Please do not feed the animals. If you have any suitable food, give it to the guard on duty.”

A car rental brochure in Tokyo:
“When passenger of foot heave in sight, tootle the horn. Trumpet him melodiously at first, but if he still obstacles your passage then tootle him with vigor.”

A notice in a Japanese hotel (ca. 1950):
“Please not to steal towels. If you are not person to do such, please not to read notice.”

A sign in a Moscow hotel room:
“If this is your first visit to the USSR, you are welcome to it”

Seen at a Swiss mountain inn:
“Special today – no ice cream.”

From Germany’s beautiful Black Forest region:
“It is strickly forbidden on our Black Forest camping site that people of different sex, for instance, men & women, live together in one tent unless they are married for that purpose.”

Welcome to wordFitness, the eZine from The Word Gym . In this issue, we discuss some of the often-overlooked language issues that can affect digital marketing materials.

We also look at print publications – specifically, at some of the problems that can make layout and typesetting a nightmare when foreign languages are involved.

As you know, this is a milestone year for us (we’re celebrating our 20th anniversary in business!), and so far it’s been a tempestuous year for everybody! We wish you all good things as spring reluctantly but steadily advances.

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Digital marketing – the part played by language

Today, thanks to the Internet, advertisers and marketers enjoy a global reach that’s fast and – in principle! - cost-effective.

There are so many ways products and services can be promoted via the web: microsites, websites, banner ads, video, eDMs, corporate blogs, social networks, and cunning viral combinations of all of the above. The list is enormous, and innovative marketers are constantly finding new ways of interacting with all these increasingly versatile media.

While advertising and marketing tools have changed radically as digital marketing overtakes the traditional kind, the basic principles remain the same. Marketing is still about engaging with people, and still uses the psychological techniques associated with traditional media. The demographics used in e-marketing are the same, albeit more finely granulated than before. But the reach is much wider, and the opportunities for personalisation are much greater. Which is why geo-targeting has taken off.

What’s in a place?

Geo-targeting means that marketers can target their audiences according to their actual, physical location. The technology is most widely used on websites: different content is served up to website visitors depending on where they are (their location can be determined by an increasingly sophisticated range of criteria, from country down to individual IP address). Geo-targeting is also increasingly popular in mobile applications (many smartphone apps make use of GPS data, for example). The possibilities are extraordinary – but so are the opportunities for getting things badly wrong.

There are many reasons for this, from the common-sensical (e.g. just because somebody is accessing a website from a computer based in Germany doesn’t necessarily mean that (a) they’re German or (b) they want to see the German-language version of the website) through to the cultural. In what follows, we’re going to assume that the common-sense aspects have been taken care of by sensible, sensitive programming (e.g. by providing easy-to-find, easy-to-use alternative options). Because of what we do, we’re particularly sensitive to the cultural side of things.

To be effective, promotional materials must use appropriate language and reflect appropriate cultural attitudes. The online challenge is especially acute, however, because the window of opportunity is very, very small: readers must be engaged instantaneously so they stop and read the website, banner ad, e-mailer or other communication. The moment-by-moment experience created by the materials is critical to a campaign’s success. Language plays a key role in this: crafted creative copy will help to “fix” the product/service in the reader’s unconscious mind. If the translation is crude, literal and hard to read, the visitor will swiftly surf away from the digital honeypot. That’s an opportunity lost.

Crude web trawling triggered by sophisticated stimuli

Younger generations with a very sophisticated awareness of market dynamics are coming online. Marketers observe some of their browsing habits and argue “hey, these guys are quite happy to use Google Translate to read info about all kinds of stuff, so why incur any more expense”. Yes, younger digital users are very adept at trawling through vast amounts of crudely presented information. But the original impression made on them, i.e. the reason why they’re interested in a particular product or service in the first place, is anything but crude – it’s based on an elegantly crafted piece of advertising, marketing or social engineering designed to arouse and maintain sustained interest.

Copy is an important part of this original impression. The copywriter has to take many factors into account when “writing up” a product or service: demographic, style, tone, messaging, psychological impact, attitudes etc. The translated copy must do the same for target audiences with culturally and linguistically differentiated expectations.

Young people in particular are often plugged into a webwork of different media (the approach is described as “media meshing”). 16-24 year olds listen to, watch and interact with multiple media types simultaneously – surfing the web and typing instant messages on a computer while listening to music and exchanging text messages on a ‘phone. So it’s critical that marketers work out the right stimuli to make sure their material stands out from the crowd.

Just one tiny example of media meshing

In 2006, while 92% of 16-24 year olds were watching TV… 
… 90% of them were also using the Internet
… 69% of them were also listening to the radio
… 62% of them were also reading a newspaper
… 51% of them were also reading a magazine

Mediascope Europe 2008, p. 33

“Multitasking is a given for this generation. The bet that all communicators of the near future will want to win will be share of affinity and interaction, rather than just attention.”
Christian Lazopoulos (Senior Strategic Partner, Saatchi & Saatchi)

Internet marketing means that campaign-to-market timeframes are becoming shorter and shorter as companies vie to be heard first in a tumult of many voices. We’ve seen the detrimental impact this has on campaigns as marketers opt for quick, cheap, transliterations of promotional copy to support a fast, low-cost market launch. This assumes speed is the primary criterion. But as we pointed out earlier: while the mechanisms of marketing may be changing, the rules governing effective marketing – marketing that leaves a lasting impression – have not. It’s worth bearing in mind that:

… while over 350 million people in the world speak English as their first language, and about the same number speak English as a second language (at very varying levels of proficiency), the global Internet population is now well over one billion. And in non-English-speaking regions it’s growing much more rapidly. That’s a huge number of potential customers who are unable to read English-language websites or appreciate downloadable marketing materials.

ICANN so you can

In November last year ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) approved the creation of URL addresses in multiple languages – heralded as the biggest change in Internet history and opening the floodgates for all kinds of new creativity. What’s more, this change will have a profound impact on online marketing and search engine optimisation in countries that do not use Roman alphabets.

More than ever, companies that do business internationally will need to design and launch websites and online campaigns with appropriate, market-specific URLs and content in multiple target languages if they are to take full advantage of the new opportunities. New developments in HTML5 also promise huge new opportunities (see below).

About The Word Gym

We’ve been an independent B2B / B2C copywriting and creative translation provider for, yes, 20 years; we specialise in producing multilingual advertising, marketing and promotional copy for corporates and communications companies worldwide. We also provide language consultancy and management services.

Find out more on our website at www.wordgym.com, e-mail us, or ring us on +44 (0)1887 820 100.

Pitfalls of foreign-language typesetting

You can come across all sorts of exciting pitfalls when you’re setting foreign-language text in layout. We’re going to mention a couple of important ones.

Punctuation…

Don’t assume that a language that appears to share your alphabet shares your punctuation! Most obviously this applies to line breaks (word separation) – each language has its own hyphenation rules, and while DTP programs have, in recent years, improved their ability to hyphenate many different languages, they still occasionally make drastic errors. But there are less obvious traps for the unwary. For example, most of us speak at least a little French. Did you know that French routinely puts a space before certain punctuation marks, such as colons, semi-colons, question marks and exclamation marks? As well as inside quotation marks? French doesn’t use quotation marks, of course: it uses double chevrons or guillemets. And that’s a language many of us think we know! Let’s look at a typical French sentence:

« Mais qu’est-ce que tu t’imaginais ? », me dit-il ; « je ne le crois pas : tu voulais lui en parler ! »

Yup, all those spaces are necessary! We’re not even going to talk about the more traditional speech marks (similar to em-dashes) still used in many French publications…

We’ve lost count of the times well-meaning typesetters have removed all the carefully coded hard spaces in a French Word file when transferring the text to their DTP program. The cost in proofreading/replacement time can be huge!

… and fonts

The situation with fonts has improved – foundry-specific fonts are gradually giving way to cross-platform OpenType fonts, which mean that a file prepared on a PC can (in theory at least!) be transferred to a Mac and then copied and pasted into Quark Xpress or InDesign without mangling all the characters. But there’s still a long way to go, especially when non-Roman fonts are used (e.g. in Chinese, Japanese, Russian etc.). Multinational companies that want a consistent corporate “look” across all their multilingual documentation are well advised to look very carefully at the various fonts they want to use – not just in their print publications, but also in their digital material.

Remember: foundry-specific fonts may not transfer at all, because:
a) the fonts may be available on one platform (e.g. PC), but not on another (e.g. Mac);
b) keyboard layouts may be different on each platform
c) you may have a licence for the font on one platform, but not on the other.
d) character set support may vary from platform to platform, so e.g. it looks great on PC, but has gaps on a Mac.

And finally, foundry-specific fonts are usually incompatible with public-domain fonts (such as those supplied with Microsoft Windows or Apple MacOS), and with fonts from other foundries. The result of trying to transfer a document produced in Microsoft Word using a Times New Roman font into e.g. InDesign using a customised font from a specific foundry can – depending on the language and font used – be a garbled mess of nonsense characters. Or more insidiously – because it’s a great deal more difficult for a proofreader to spot - just a few characters may be garbled.

More generally:

English speakers are lucky – there’s an enormous range of typefaces to choose from. Other languages don’t necessarily have such a broad choice; some (e.g. Cyrillic alphabet-based languages) are positively anaemic.

On the positive side, there have been some amazing advances in the provision of support for a wider variety of fonts online. “Browser-safe” fonts have been extended by such cunning utilities as FontJazz, for example, and a raft of new standards enabling support for more fonts on websites are being proposed as part of the new HTML5 framework. Many of them are in use already .

Howler of the month!

Safety and information announcements provide a feast of “how not to do it if you want to be taken seriously”
moments…

From a Russian airline safety brochure
“Airlines staff can ask you for something concerning smoking and we beg you to follow its advices and recommendations. If you possess strong will and are able to decline smoking during the flight, non-smoking passengers and the crew will appreciate your generosity and respect for them”

That’s good to know – but what about those unfortunates who don’t possess a strong will…?!

From a safety sign in a Bucharest hotel lobby
“The lift is being fixed for the next day. During that time we regret that you will be unbearable.”

Hm. Sounds like there are a lot of stairs…

From a Chinese sign for a sewage treatment plant
“Dirty Water Punishment Place”

Now that sounds truly nasty.

Yes, it’s happened: months of feverish speculation have finally culminated in the unveiling of Apple’s – as ever, polished – answer to a market demand that may or may not exist.

But I’m not going to spend hours dribbling and drooling over the various elegant features that make Apple’s device more likely to succeed than the flawed specimens which have accompanied Microsoft’s manic efforts to promote the tablet concept. Nor am I going to join the ranks of those inveterate Apple critics who are already sneering at it because it doesn’t have the webcam and support for live video feeds apparently promised by the unfortunate Stéphane Richard from Orange (you sad, strange people, how easy it is to sneer!). Nor am I going to marvel at the ease with which users will apparently be able to manipulate photos and watch videos, although for some reason journalists – like magpies, easily distracted by pretty, shiny things – insist on using these features as the primary criteria for judging every machine from desktop workstations to ultraportable netbooks.

No, I’m going to look at the Apple iPad from the purely pragmatic perspective of one who would expect to carry round loads of data – in every possible format – on such a device. Of one who would expect to be able to manage such data easily, quickly and conveniently. Of one who, in short, when reading reviews of the latest eBook reader, looks before anything else for some mention of the device’s file management ability; for a word or two about its built-in search function.

Journalists may sneer at the inability of a netbook to play HD video, but few of them ever think of discussing the ability of an eBook reader – a device that is, after all, nothing more than a mobile library – to track down useful information lurking somewhere in the hundreds of files stuffed into its built-in memory or plugged-in SD card. In fact, I challenge readers to find a single review of an eBook reader, from the Amazon Kindle through to the iRiver Story, that mentions the existence of a search function (the Story actually features a “Search” button on the keyboard – yet not even the manufacturer has realised that this might be a cool selling point!).

Which brings me to the iPad. After contemplating the video, laughing at the way you can flip photos over to show your friends, and reading about all the other features full of Appley Goodness, I am satisfied about one thing, but not about another. First, the iPad comes with Searchlight (Apple’s excellent search function), and this fact is actually mentioned as a selling point in the list of features. So that’s a big tick in the info management box. But a second, burning question still remains: does it come with the equivalent of a Finder (something that is sorely lacking in the iPhone)? Hints suggest that it probably does – after all, there’s not much point in providing a customised version of iWork if you can’t manipulate files easily – but there’s nothing conclusive.

As a writer, translator and businessperson, I carry around hundreds of files on my various beloved portables and ultraportables (even on the ancient Packard Bell handheld computer I’m using to write this blog!). They range from works in progress to useful reference sources to business agreements. For some reason, file managers are amazingly untrendy at the moment (for years Windows Explorer has been confined to the depths of the Accessories menu). But without a capable file manager, ideally accompanied by a search function, my productivity is dramatically reduced. I like the Apple Finder precisely because, in a pleasantly unobtrusive but exceedingly accessible way, it actually puts file management at the user’s fingertips. In the case of the iPad, I’m hoping that it will literally put my files at my fingertips – on that lovely, swooshy, iPhone-like screen – so I’ll finally be able to give up my trusty Packard Bell for something that’s capable of connecting directly to my modern laptop and actually sports a modern browser.

For the record, I will just mention that like the iPad, my trusty Packard Bell weighs about 1.5 lbs, has a 10-hour battery life and a touch screen, and boasts instant-on convenience. Unlike the iPad, however, it also has a real, touch-typist-friendly keyboard: all this in a machine that’s now over 10 years old… (It’s an EasyMate 770 – based on the NEC MobilePro 770 – for those who want to know. You can still buy the slightly more modern NEC MobilePro 900, complete with WiFi and extended battery, from here).

But then again, I’m sure St. Steven has many another revelation for the long-suffering Faithful…

In our firm, we’re still unabashed users of Microsoft Office 2003. Of course this apparent conservatism is not unusual in business, which has largely eschewed Windows Vista and stuck with Windows XP even though the latter is now eight years old. This accords with a simple, solid business principle: “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. But in other respects, here at The Word Gym we’re fairly sophisticated users of technology who are not averse to keeping up-to-date with recent developments – provided, of course, we can see the benefits of doing so. So for example, we use OneNote 2007 because it is vastly superior to the 2003 version and brings with it genuinely useful features such as collaborative networking.

No, our reason for failing to upgrade to Microsoft Office 2007 is much more pragmatic. As a language company, we make much use of spelling and grammar checkers across a very wide variety of languages. During the Office 2003 era, Microsoft used to sell the entirety of their spelling and grammar checking tools on a single CD-ROM, for a very reasonable price (I forget exactly how much it was now, but seem to remember it was in the region of £90 – and remember, that included ALL languages). These tools could be installed alongside Office, and were instantly accessible to all Office applications.

With the advent of Office 2007, things changed. In a sneaky move inspired, no doubt, by Steve Ballmer himself, Microsoft started to charge for each “language pack” (including the spelling and grammar checkers for an individual language) as separate units, priced at about £30 each. A little while ago, I calculated that if we upgraded our versions of Office to the very latest 2007 versions (I haven’t even started to look at 2010!), we would have to spend around £600 per user to install the language packs we most commonly use (still far short of the comprehensive offering available for Office 2003)! Not amusing!

Of course we do have other options nowadays, fortunately. There is a wide variety of (open-source) spellcheckers available for OpenOffice and StarOffice (not to mention the impressively comprehensive spellcheckers used in SoftMaker Office, recently endorsed by the German government). There are other commercial and open-source spellcheckers such as e.g. aspell or ispell (for an interesting overview of spellchecking trends in general, see Wikipedia). But the strength of Microsoft’s offering – for which one can forgive the occasional spellchecking inaccuracy – lies in the combination of spellchecking with grammar checking. While the grammar checker will never be any good as a style checker – despite its pretensions to be one – it is surprisingly useful as a convenient indicator of silly errors such as double spaces, repeat words, false agreements and so on. At the present time, no other software suite offers such a comprehensive tool – so you could argue, not unreasonably, that Microsoft’s decision to jack up the price is simply a reflection of both its value and its uniqueness. But as a long-term user of Microsoft Office since its very earliest days, I have to say the discrepancy still rankles.

Give us a break, Steve. It’s long-term users like us that have put so many billions of dollars into Microsoft’s reserves…

Hi folks,

Welcome to wordFitness, the monthly eZine from The Word Gym. First of all, we’d like to wish you a very happy, healthy, prosperous and peaceful 2010!

2010 is a milestone for The Word Gym, as we celebrate our 20th birthday this month. Yes, the company was founded in January 1990, when the Amstrad PC-1512 was still at the cutting edge of consumer computing, fax machines were still pretty cool, and the French still used Minitel. Plenty of water has rolled under the bridge since then, and this anniversary gives us an opportunity to reflect on how the world of words has changed over the past two decades.

Feel free to add your comments to the following timeline – the pace of change over the past 20 years has been amazing, and I’m sure we all have favourite memories it would be nice to share.

Meanwhile, we wish you all good things in 2010.

Lois

Sign me up for this eZine

In this issue of wordFitness:

20 years of innovation (1,000 words; ca. 7 minutes to read)
Reading copy in another language (450 words; ca. 3 minutes to read)
Howler of the month!

Celebrating 20 years of innovation

January 1990 and The Word Gym was conceived. But why “The Word Gym” and not “Vox Mundi”, or something along those lines? Well, the cofounders were both fitness fanatics as well as wordsmiths, and after an unfit, boozy evening, abandoned posh Latin in favour of the pleasing Anglo-Saxon jauntiness of The Word Gym, which pretty much does what it says on the tin.

So what’s cutting-edge in 1990?
The fax machine is relatively new. The Word Gym blows its equipment budget on 386SX PCs, each boasting a majestic 8 MB (no, not GB) of RAM! We also acquire one of the first CD-ROM drives and liaise with our writers and translators by fax and dial-up modem. Hey, we’re technology leaders!

Other events: Nelson Mandela is released from detention after 27 years in prison; Tim Berners-Lee invents the World-Wide Web; East and West Germany are unified.

In 1991 we work for Mercedes-Benz, BP Chemicals, the Steinbeis Transfer Center and Landesbank Baden-Württemberg.
1991 also sees the dissolution of the USSR and the formation of the CIS.

In 1992 Lois joins The Word Gym; we work for Siemens, Porsche, Volkswagen. The Word Gym is the second translation company in the UK to be certified under quality standard BS 5750 part 2 (now ISO 9002) by BSI.
The first Earth Summit Conference takes place in Rio de Janeiro; war breaks out in Bosnia; Jean Armour Polly coins the phrase “surfing the Internet”.

In 1993 we move to new offices in Crystal Palace; clients now include ICI, Iomega, Swiss Bank Corporation and Unix. The Word Gym becomes the preferred transcreation supplier to Opsrey Communications, Wickens Tutt Southgate and Fox Parrack Fox. We also start working for BBC Music Magazine.
The Northern Ireland peace pact is signed; a reported 15 million people are now connected to the Internet.

In 1994 we work for BP/Bovis Alliance, UBS, DHL and Michelin, and with agency CDP. Other clients include Hitachi Europe, EMC, Thomas-Conrad, Zurich Insurance and Bauknecht.
The Channel Tunnel is opened.

In 1995 we work for the Aga Khan and various European Commission directorates, as well as Banque Paribas, Cherry and Quantel. New agency clients include BST-BDDP.
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin is assassinated; Austria, Finland and Sweden join the EU; Yahoo is launched.

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In 1996 we move our head office to Oxford; we work for Renault and Groupe Hexacom in France; K+K Hotels, FIBRO and Sappi Europe in Germany; SEGA, Marconi Instruments, CitiBank and JP Morgan.
US space shuttle Atlantis docks with Russia’s Mir space station; the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty is signed by the USA, Russia, France, China and Australia.

In 1997 we work on marketing materials for Scansped Group AB, Europe’s largest logistics operator; also with BP, ABB and Converse. The Word Gym is the preferred transcreation supplier to LSA/Webershandwick and Finex.
Dolly the Sheep is cloned in the UK; Hong Kong reverts to Chinese rule; the Kyoto Protocol is signed.

In 1998 we work on Intuit’s advertising account, and also for the Financial Times, Merrill Lynch, Jim Beam and Opel/Vauxhall. We’re the transcreation supplier of choice to agencies Cogent, DLKW and Publicis, and start working for pharmaceutical specialists Beckman Coulter and Steris.
In Ireland, the Good Friday agreement is signed.

In 1999 The Word Gym works on marketing projects for IBM Tivoli Systems, Nortel Networks, NCR, Amadeus, Lancôme and Oracle Corporation, and on advertising campaigns for HP, AMD and Pioneer. We are the transcreation supplier of choice to FCB.
11 EU states launch the euro; self-rule is initiated in Northern Ireland; the world’s population reaches 6 billion.

In 2000 we write copy for Axa and Palm Computing, and transcreate brochures for Sandals and DaimlerChrysler. We also work with J Walter Thompson, Banks Hoggins O’Shea/FCB and Lowe & Partners Worldwide, Bartle Bogle Hegarty and Miller Bainbridge.
The new millennium is celebrated around the world; the first permanent crew of the International Space Station launches into space aboard Soyuz TM-31.

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In 2001 The Word Gym is transcreation agency of choice for Handspring Europe and OmniSky, as well as agencies 3 Fish in a Tree and Partners BDDH.
The World Trade Centre in New York is destroyed; the dot.com crash ravages adland; the People’s Republic of China is granted normalised trade status by the USA.

In 2002 we are the transcreation agency of choice for Sony Broadcast & Professional Europe, Inmarsat Global and agencies Mindshare and Fox Murphy (Balloon Dog).
Estonia hosts the first Eurovision Song Contest in a former Soviet republic; the International Criminal Court is established.

In 2003 The Word Gym is transcreation agency of choice for BI Worldwide, Pinnacle Systems and Sage CRM Solutions, and also works for agencies DPA (FCBi), the Ideas Industry and Meteorite.
Space shuttle Columbia disintegrates on re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere; Sweden rejects adoption of the euro.

In 2004 we are the transcreation agency of choice for Sony Electronics Europe and Sony CRM in Brussels.
Yasser Arafat dies in Paris; NASA’s MER-A rover Spirit successfully lands on Mars.

In 2005 The Word Gym links up with associates in New Zealand, and becomes transcreation supplier of choice to Dare Digital, Profero and SMP. We produce brochures for Ernst & Young in Germany.
Angela Merkel is elected Germany’s first female Chancellor; Ellen Johnson Sirleaf becomes Africa’s first female head of state.

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In 2006 The Word Gym’s European HQ moves to Perthshire in Scotland. We become transcreation supplier of choice to Design Motive and DDB France (working on multi-platform tourism materials). We write copy for the Stephen Lawrence Trust.
The New Horizons spacecraft is launched to study Pluto; Google buys YouTube.

In 2007 we are transcreation supplier of choice to Tequila France and Wieden & Kennedy Europe. We write copy and transcreate brochures for the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management.
Romania and Bulgaria join the EU, bringing the membership to 27 countries in total; Buenos Aires experiences the city’s first snowfall for 89 years.

In 2008 The Word Gym works on copywriting and transcreation for Crown Europe, and starts working with agency KB49.
India launches its first unmanned spacecraft to produce 3D maps of the Moon; first spacewalk by a Chinese astronaut.

In 2009 we work with Faith the Agency, Highland Spring, the Union Advertising Agency, Momentum Worldwide, L’Etoffe des héros and the Heinrich Böll Foundation.
Slovakia accedes to the eurozone; Albania and Croatia join NATO.

In 2010… well, we’re looking forward to finding out!

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About The Word Gym

Independent B2B/B2C copy writing and translation provider for, yes, 20 years, we specialise in promotional copy for corporates and communications agencies worldwide. We also provide language consultancy and management services; find out more on our website at www.wordgym.com, e-mail us, or ring us on +44 (0)1887 820 100.

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Reading copy in a language that’s not your own

Advertising and marketing campaigns are often organised centrally. This means the master copy is usually written in English, then translated into the languages of the other target markets.

Nowadays, most managers of central campaigns are alert to local-market sensitivities: they make sure the draft English copy is sent to in-market reps so they can confirm they’re happy with the concept. Once the copy has been approved in all the target markets, it’s sent off for translation. And here we come across one of those little psychological stumbling blocks that make creative work so exciting.

Involving in-country reps is a vital part of campaign buy-in, of course: we thoroughly recommend it. But in our experience, the real communication challenge only happens once the in-country office sees the copy transcreated into their own language. Only then can they really assess the impact of the content on their (stress: their) target market.

Not infrequently, the translated copy is greeted with howls of protest. This may be due to the fact that the master copy has been translated rather than transcreated – it may be technically accurate, yet have all the sizzle and dynamism of a blancmange. Sometimes, however, even a very competent transcreation is unfairly blamed for misgivings that are technical, commercial or political in scope. In short, the in-market rep has realised that now they can read it properly, in their own language, they don’t really like the concept very much, or don’t feel it’s appropriate for their target audience (for more on the relative value attached to different language versions of a creative concept, see this wordFlex entry).

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It’s good to talk (no, really…)

At The Word Gym we help our clients navigate through this cultural maze by asking to see the proposed master copy as early in the process as possible, so we can advise on any obvious issues before the copy is finalised. What’s more, we can take over the whole process of liaising with local-market contacts – in their own languages – to discuss and resolve any anxieties or issues they may raise once they see the transcreated copy.

Our direct liaison service can resolve perceived problems very quickly and smoothly, often because frustrated managers trying to express a point in English can sound much angrier and more frustrated than they really are: the actual issue might well be minor, but if the point is subtle, it can be difficult to articulate in a language other than your mother-tongue. Of course we feed back any market-specific issues to our clients, so they can make informed decisions about whether the content should be modified in specific cases.

Moving on these issues as soon as possible saves time and budget. And (paradoxically, perhaps) our local-market liaison can also enhance cross-border relationships within organisations.

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Howler of the month!

Names are a frequent source of trouble in international marketing. Here are a few of our faves:

Toyota didn’t stop to check the apparently innocuous name of the group’s most popular sports car, the MR2, when it was first launched in France. Apparently even Toyota’s French marketing specialists failed to spot the fact that in French, MR2 is pronounced “emmerde” – very similar to a French verb meaning “to p*ss somebody off” – and also to the adjective “merdeux”, meaning “sh*tty”. Not good! The car was relaunched as the MR. Mind you, that didn’t stop the French MR2 owners’ club from using the domain name mr2.fr!

Shortly after launching an international marketing campaign, the Kinki Nippon Tourist Company decided to change the firm’s (English) name following a flood of inquiries about “alternative” Japanese holidays from English-speaking readers…

And Perrier’s lemonade Pschitt!, while popular in France, was – for some reason – never quite as popular in the Anglophone world…

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What do you think?

We’d love to hear what you think of wordFitness at The Word Gym. Please let us know by dropping an e-mail to lois[dot]thomas[at]wordgym[dot]com

Spread the word
Do you know anybody who’d benefit from a free subscription to wordFitness? If you do, please forward this issue to them. We’re sure they’ll be pleased you did!

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Protecting your privacy

Your privacy is extremely important to us. We never sell, trade or pass on your details – or your e-mail address – to third parties.

Copyright in this eZine © 2010 The Word Gym Ltd.

Published and distributed by The Word Gym Ltd.
European Head Office, The Old Sawmill, Camserney,
by Aberfeldy, Perth & Kinross PH15 2JF, UK.
T +44 (0)1887 820 100.
W www.wordgym.com

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On a recent visit to Glasgow just after Hogmanay (what the Scots call New Year, for the very few of you who may not know), I was both amused and appalled by a series of linguistic encounters. The first was the word “bargain”. The power of this simple term is fascinating – perfectly sober, respectable people lose all sense of proportion and, sometimes, of propriety, upon hearing that something is a “bargain”. The female of the species is especially susceptible to the subsonic vibrations that must, I feel, be the key to this word’s potency. Having bought a garment (but especially a pair of shoes), for a magisterial price, my wife is perfectly capable of widening her eyes in disbelief as a I stagger around moaning and clutching various cash-sensitive parts of my anatomy: “But it was a bargain”, she proclaims: “they took 40% off!”

This abuse of a term for its psychological potency is, however, as nothing to the ghastly and growing misuse of the word “bespoke”. So degraded is our cultural awareness – or else so cynical is the average marketing copywriter – that one finds “bespoke” regularly used to describe off-the-shelf goods of all kinds, even when it is apparent that no attempt whatsoever has been made to tailor or customise the item to an individual’s specific requirements. In short, it has become a meaningless term of marketing differentiation, designed to imply that something is “special” just because you call it so. It goes without saying that the generic word “special” was degraded decades ago, but it upsets me very much that “bespoke” – such an elegant word, with such a fine tradition of courtly, courteous and above all correct usage by craftsmen engaged in producing genuinely bespoke goods to very specific requirements – should be going the same way.

That copywriters may not be cynical so much as merely ignorant was brought home to me by the third linguistic incident: on a large poster advertising a civic celebration of the New Year holiday, one of the incitements was “Free canopies”. Baffled, I wondered why providing canopies free of charge should be regarded as a particularly enticing inducement for revellers. And then it dawned on me: the buffoon who had written these words had, no doubt, been instructed to write “free canapés“. Ignorant of the meaning not only of the latter term (possibly excusable), but also (much less excusable) of the former word’s meaning, the hapless cretin had put down the first thing which came into his head, displaying a spectacularly narrow (and utterly urban) combination of underdeveloped sensibility and non-existent social mobility. I fled back to the Highlands, which true to Scotland’s cultural traditions, are full of remarkably knowledgeable people (as J. M. Barrie puts it in one of his plays: “Being Scottish, there’s almost nothing I don’t know” [The Old Lady Shows Her Medals, 1918]).

This tenet does not, unfortunately, appear to apply to Glaswegians…

Hi folks,

Welcome to wordFitness, the new monthly eZine from The Word Gym. We thought the start of the festive season would be an ideal time to launch!

Writing an eZine full of interesting news on our activities is tricky, because so much of what we do is highly confidential. We’re always working on projects for brand-new products and services that haven’t been launched yet! Maybe we’re writing copy for a B2B campaign by a major software developer, or translating ads for a B2C food and drink retailer, or tailoring eDM copy for a major energy company: whatever it is, it’s all leading-edge stuff that we can’t put in a newsletter under any circumstances.

But we’ve been working in this specialist field for 20 years, so we do have a few entertaining things to say about copy in English and other languages. Entertaining and, we hope, genuinely useful. Your comments, if you choose to make any, will also be useful.

Have a brilliant Christmas, and we’ll be in touch in the New Year!

Lois

Sign me up for this eZine

In this issue of wordFitness:

How to choose a translation agency (1,000 words; ca. 7 minutes to read) 
How’s your own copy coping?
Howler of the month!

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How to choose a translation agency
(or: what you should be asking, really!)

Securing the services of a reliable language services provider is, to our mind, probably one of the most difficult things international marketing and advertising professionals have to do.

Putting together a reliable team of writers who produce consistent, high-quality work is a challenge. We’ve been dealing with it for 20 years, and sometimes it’s still a challenge, even though we’ve been working with most of our teams for a very long time.

The problem lies in the notion of “translation”. Most of us learned a second language at school. Putting aside different school systems and experiences, the basic method doesn’t vary much. Language students first learn by rote – numbers, colours, family relationships, polite phrases and so on – then acquire a more extended vocabulary for “conversation”. But even this vocabulary is learned by rote: the cat is “le chat”, the table is “la table”. We’re taught from an early stage to think of the other language as a series of direct matches to our own language.

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The big differences…
The trouble is, no language directly matches another language. We all know that German (and Latin) tend to put the verb at the end of the sentence (plenty of jokes about this made have been)! We all know that French puts most adjectives after the noun (these French crazy, we British sensible do not understand). But these differences – already significant – only hint at the profound issues involved in finding the right attention-grabbing phrase that doesn’t necessarily match, but is precisely equivalent to, the phrase you’ve used in your latest witty headline or call to action.

Translation is not about finding a bunch of “identical words” in another language. It’s about understanding the copy – messages, desired outcomes, target audience, tone of voice, how it relates to visuals – in fact, all the things copywriters need to know when they write copy in the first place. The true task is to produce, not just a literal translation of the kind we all depressed our teachers with at school, but a crafted adaptation that produces exactly the same effect(s) on the foreign readership as the effect(s) produced by the original copy.

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Language, culture, people
To write a really great piece of marketing copy, you’ve got to be interested in language, familiar with the target culture, and very familiar with the target audience’s expectations. That means your translators must be intelligent, sensible, flexible and up to date. Oh, and genuinely passionate about language (not just a language, but the nature of language: structures, rhythms, associations, all of it).

What do you need when hiring a new language services provider?
As a bare minimum, you need referees you can speak to directly, or samples of previous work, or a short test piece you can ask in-country reviewers to assess.
You need to know about process, too. Most translation companies work with freelancers – that’s not unusual. But how do they select their freelance suppliers? How do they check their work (you’d be amazed how many companies run no checks at all)? If they check, do they review 100% of the work, or just random samples? Do they encourage, update, feed back to or appreciate their freelancers?

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The importance of asking questions
Many translation providers believe that asking questions is a sign of ignorance. They don’t realise that asking questions is all about understanding a client’s needs more fully. If a language services provider doesn’t ask you for a copy brief or copy platform, warning bells should start to ring.

Those bells should be ringing louder if they don’t ask you questions like: who’s the copy aimed at (demographics); where’s it going to be published, in what format, in what context (as a one-off, or part of a larger campaign? To existing clients, or new prospects?).

The alarm bells should be deafening you if all they ask is “how many words is it?”, then trot off to write a quotation without any further input. Years ago, we were asked by Nortel Networks to adapt a brand tagline:

“Making it happen with the true power of the Internet”

It took teams of up to three writers per language several days to produce suitable equivalents for the target markets. That’s just 10 English words. A couple of years later, we were asked by Levi’s to transcreate their famous jeans tagline:

“Twisted to fit”

Just three words: but that took even longer!

What you really need to hear is: “Please send over your material and we’ll take a look”: because not all translations are equal.

And finally, you should be expecting questions in the course of the project. Because a really good translation team will be picking up every nuance, ambiguity and grey area, and making sure they understand exactly what each element is supposed to achieve.

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Beware of quality assurance systems: ISO whatever!
Okay, this will probably get us lynched, but it’s worth remembering that most service-related QA systems are about monitoring process quality rather than product quality. The presence of a QA system means the company’s making an effort. But it may also mean they’ve developed mechanical processes that are nice and easy to follow, but don’t bear much relation to the “fitness for purpose” of the final product.

Why are we sharing this with you?
We get asked to fix a lot of other people’s mistakes. We don’t mind doing that, but it’s much more fun to work with clients to get their copy right in the first place. It’s faster, more cost-efficient, and creatively much, much more rewarding!

By the time creative copy comes to be translated, it has often been “signed off” in senior managers’ minds (both at agency and end-client level); after all, the English copy has been finalised and approved! In actual fact, the translation process involves just as many factors as writing the English did in the first place – further constrained by the fact that the translations cannot deviate too far from the original English. Yes, you heard right: that’s a constraint, not a blessing.

We love: helping our clients turn foreign-language copy into exciting new opportunities, not just an irritating afterthought…

We hate: translated copy that reads like a list of washing-machine parts.

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About The Word Gym

Independent B2B/B2C copy writing and translation provider for nearly 20 years, specialising in promotional copy for corporates and communications agencies worldwide. We also provide language consultancy and management services; find out more on our website at www.wordgym.com

Coping with copy…

One of the positive side effects of working with language consultants who specialise in multilingual copy – rather than, say, a traditional translation company – is the difference in quality of service. We know that no matter how good a piece of copy is, it can always be improved, so we give you feedback on any inconsistencies, omissions, ambiguities or other unclear elements in your source copy. After all, if our trained managers or language teams spot a weakness, it’s almost certainly not supposed to be there.

A propos: we analyse all the copy we’re given. It’s not an additional service. It’s something we do as a matter of course. It’s a fundamentally different approach from the translation company that responds to any issues in the translated copy with the well-worn but inadequate excuse: “Oh well, it was in the source document, so we simply translated it. We can’t be held responsible for the source document…”.

The point is, a professional relationship is about two-way communication. A professional relationship is about making sure the end-result is as effective as it possibly can be – so it boosts your image and income, not just our own. A professional relationship is, at the end of the day, about building long-term confidence. Not just about making a one-off sale.

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Howler of the month!

As you know, poor translation can make a brand memorable for all the wrong reasons!

Here’s one of our favourites. An English line used by chicken farming specialist Purdue read:

“It takes a strong man to make a chicken tender.”

Now that’s gently humorous, with more than a hint of ambiguous naughtiness. But we don’t suppose they meant to go quite as far, quite as unsubtly, as the Spanish translation that was posted up on billboards across Mexico, which back-translates as follows:

“It takes an aroused man to make a chicken affectionate.”

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What do you think?

We’d love to hear what you think of wordFitness at The Word Gym. Please let us know by dropping an e-mail to lois[dot]thomas[at]wordgym[dot]com

Spread the word
Do you know anybody who’d benefit from a free subscription to wordFitness? If you do, please forward this issue to them. We’re sure they’ll be pleased you did!

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Protecting your privacy

Your privacy is extremely important to us. We never sell, trade or pass on your details – or your e-mail address – to third parties.

Copyright in this eZine © 2009 The Word Gym Ltd.
Published and distributed by The Word Gym Ltd.
European Head Office, The Old Sawmill, Camserney,
by Aberfeldy, Perth & Kinross PH15 2JF, UK.
T +44 (0)1887 820 100.
W www.wordgym.com

Really impressive? ‘What’, I hear you say, ‘you mean a couple of iMac upgrades, a new MacBook and a fancy mouse? I think not!’

Actually, yes, they are impressive. Let’s take the iMacs. The entire range has leapt in specifications and desirability – not by a little, but by rather a lot. The amazing screens are the most obvious thing: even the low-end iMac now has a full HD screen, and the 27” thing is simply lovely. But it doesn’t end there: the impressive LED backlighting, ultra-wide viewing angles and VESA mounting compatibility mean that the iMac really is the obvious all-in-one substitute for your PC, television and hi-fi (apart, perhaps, from the lack of Blu-Ray support, but personally I regard that entire technology as grossly overrated, and certainly grossly overpriced).

Objects of desire

Then there’s the subtle stuff – the graphics support has been ramped up (again, to quite an impressive spec), and that gorgeous unibody concept applied to the iMac as well as the Apple notebook range. Clever. It’s certainly turned the new iMacs into the sexiest computers on the planet.

But wait, I hear you cry, what about all these touch-screen AIOs the likes of HP, Sony and even Dell are unleashing on the world? All running Microsoft’s spanking new Windows 7 with its built-in tablet support?

Yes, very nice. But let me ask you this. If it’s a choice between smudging your gorgeous screen with your/your kiddies’ grubby fingertips, and using the new Magic Mouse – which is basically a touchpad cunningly disguised as a mouse – I know which one I’d be going for. Listen, I’ve played with touchscreens, and they’re very nice. For about five minutes. Then you realise that the ergonomics of lifting your entire arm just to interact with the GUI are actually less than optimal. Very soon (within about 15 minutes) you find you’re groping for your mouse. And hey presto, you’re back where you started…

The Magic Mouse, on the other hand, is a whole new approach to mousing, because you can use it in so many different ways – even as a kind of mini-graphic tablet. I am actually seriously impressed by this, and I suspect the journos will be, too, once they’ve caught up with fun-loving Stevie…

Keep ’em guessing…

Ah, Steve’s a prankster – isn’t it just like him to play such games with the press. Because he knows that first, Apple’s reputation for sexiness is going to deflect attention from Windows 7, but second, that his most important product launch is one that techno-journalists in particular will appreciate more than most.

No, I’m not talking about the new MacBook (although it’s a very juicy little number, I agree, and if I was a Mac user I’d be queuing up to buy one). I’m talking about the novelty launch in the Mac Mini range: a Mac Mini optimised to run Snow Leopard Server.

Genius! Not many people realised that Mac OS X Server can run on relatively modest hardware (not least because of its tightly coded open-source components – we’ve been running many of our state-of-the-art open-source applications on elderly Windows 2000 servers for some years now). But Snow Leopard is more efficient than Leopard was, the new Mac Mini is more powerful than the old one, and the addition of two (albeit relatively slow) 500GB disks is a stroke of genius (as well as ensuring that people buy the external DVD drive more or less automatically).

Unlimited clients, anyone?

The real stroke of genius, though, is providing the unlimited-user version of the Server OS, at a bargain-basement price. A Mac Mini with DVD drive, video adapter and AppleCare Protection Plan will cost you just over a grand (in British Pounds Sterling, that is). Peanuts! Yes, you’ll get a better spec if you buy, for example, one of my favourite NAS servers from the Synology series – more storage space, much higher performance, a nice web interface – but let’s be clear, Apple Server is seriously cool and has all the features the average SME could ever want. Also, and more importantly, it leverages Apple’s other advantages – the way Apple products all (in a perfect world) interface together to make installation a (relatively speaking, of course) piece of cake…

By this I mean that if you opt for e.g. Apple’s TimeCapsule backup, an AirPort Express wireless router and maybe a couple of external USB drives, you can build a secure, easy-to-access network for yourself – with built-in VPN for your growing number of teleworkers – very easily. At the price the Mac Mini is selling for, you could buy several of them, so they could run individual server components (a simple way to spread the load). Thanks to tricks like Bonjour, it’s easy to network them together.

Virtualisation? Not exactly…

In fact it’s the opposite of virtualisation – but it’s an approach most small businesses will feel much happier with than playing around with virtual machines. I would go as far as to say that physical hardware with precisely defined functions is something that self-taught IT managers will always prefer to the relatively complex issues associated with VM management (security for starters, with virtual networking coming a close second). Personally, I love it! It’s sometimes difficult, I think, for professional IT consultants and journalists, let alone enterprise IS managers, to understand just how disruptive the administration of small-business IT systems can be when the role of IT administrator is just one of many being performed by the same person.

Of course third-party suppliers of IT solutions are not going to be so delighted by this news from Apple. But Apple’s deliberate effort to shake up the standard Microsoft solutions mix is very timely. I remember, only a little while ago, inviting eight IT suppliers to tender for our relatively sophisticated IT needs (we are, if I may say so, a little ahead of the curve on our appreciation of the importance of IT integration). One of my stipulations was: must not be based on Microsoft Exchange or Small Business Server (been there, done that – got the burnt, ragged, holey, expensive T-shirt!). One by one, they each fell away, unable to suggest anything else that would manage our DMS, CMS, database and IM needs coherently, efficiently and with full cross-platform compatibility. In the end, we built the solution ourselves.

Delayed impact

These product announcements by Apple will make a significant impact on the market, of that I’m quite convinced. The interesting thing is, the impact won’t be immediate – it’ll be the same kind of incremental, momentum-gathering impact we’ve seen in the evolution of the iPod and iPhone. Or, to draw a closer parallel, the launch of iWork (one of the most extraordinary software suites I’ve ever played with – especially Numbers), which is steadily gaining ground among Mac users. They appear to reflect a more sober, thoughtful approach to market penetration by the Great Man himself; one that relies less on high melodrama, more on a pervasive feeling that Apple is the easy and, above all, the elegant option. In our designer-driven culture, it’s a very clever way of building a dominant market position without laying yourself open to the monopoly concerns that have troubled Microsoft, IBM and now Google.