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Translating marketing material is quite different than translating technical content for a product manual. While technical translations require precise accuracy to render exact equivalents, marketing translations more often than not demand a transcreative approach. According to this method, the translator avoids strictly literal translations and instead looks for the most culturally and linguistically appropriate words and expressions. Put simply, strict literalism not infrequently leads to egregious marketing translation mistakes.
But optimal marketing translation requires more than just a transcreative approach. Before you even start a marketing translation project, you’ll first want to compile a glossary or term base. When you check and use consistent terminology, your translations remain reliably in sync, and you avoid serious marketing translation mistakes. (We have published material on terminology management and will not cover this topic here.)
Terminology is critical. For example, whatever your product or service has been named in your product description or service outline is how you should refer to it in all marketing documentation including, marketing collateral, web content, social media networks, etc. If possible, have your terminology signed off in the target markets. This will help the reader to clearly understand your message and can help avoid embarrassing and potentially damaging miscommunication as shown below.
Just because a marketing message works for one market does not mean it will work in other markets. Here are some examples of marketing messages gone wrong:
- The wildly successful “Got Milk” campaign from The Dairy Association also gained a lot of attention in Mexico. The translation: “Are You Lactating?”
- Coors Brewing slogan “Turn it loose” when converted to Spanish means “Suffer from diarrhea” — uh…I think I’ll just have an orange juice please.
- Clairol launched a curling iron called “Mist Stick” in Germany. Mist in German is slang for manure. It turns out manure sticks aren’t very popular in Germany.
These examples where taken from the website: http://www.socialnomics.net/2011/03/29/13-marketing-translations-gone-wrong/ where you can read more funny marketing translations.
These examples are exactly why TrueLanguage has different translators for different content in the same language. While technical translations are very close and sometimes verbatim to the source text, the translations of marketing material often require a creative mind for the translation as the content has to be tweaked to deliver a good message.
Consider a Partnership with TrueLanguage
Are you looking for a partnership with a language service provider? If so, you may wish to consider TrueLanguage. We offer ISO-certified state-of-the-art business translation services that are on budget, on time, and to the exact specification. Every time. Or perhaps you’re just looking for a cost-free, no-obligation estimate for your next translation project. Either way, we’d love to hear from you!
