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December 2009
Vol. 1 No. 1

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

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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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Copyright in this eZine © 2009 The Word Gym Ltd.
Published and distributed by The Word Gym Ltd.
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by Aberfeldy, Perth & Kinross PH15 2JF, UK.
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