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Hi folks,

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.”