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Our blog topic is double-sided this week – we’re looking at the translation services we provide for our commercial clients. Why double-sided? Because a writer or translator for the commercial world often has to keep two audiences in mind in the course of the project. We have some big commercial clients at TrueLanguage, with names any of you reading this would recognize. And in working for these clients, we’re sometimes presented with enormous document packages aimed at both sides of the coin – the business and the customer.
Translating for the business side of a commercial client isn’t that different from translating legal or technical documents, as we’ve blogged about in past weeks. In fact, it falls closely in line with that work. Consider a hypothetical, fast-concept American restaurant chain, well established in the US with stores all over the country, and seeking to begin operations in Brazil. Real estate will have to be purchased or rented, construction ordered, services arranged, financial information exchanged. All of this will entail a mountain of paperwork, which will have to be translated. Once these deals are done to the satisfaction of all concerned, the company will have to begin the hiring process in Brazil, for staff at all levels, from management to custodial workers – hence, more documentation that has to move from American English into Brazilian Portuguese, without a hitch and with all meaning and content preserved. And once the staff are hired, they’ll need training manuals, instruction guides for the kitchen equipment, quality assurance procedures and checklists, and so on, all with no room for error. The minute attention to detail of a technical translation, with a legal translation’s pressing need for fidelity to the original content… one lapse in the translation of an operator’s manual for, say, a pressure fryer could lead to serious injury for a worker, and major trouble for all involved parties, including the translator.
And what about the customer side? Here’s where things get… well, more fun and interesting, to be honest! Translation of customer-facing materials moves into the realm of marketing, which requires a measure of creativity. Less rigorous, perhaps, but a challenge all its own.
We’ve written before about transcreation, mentioning it as the translation of context rather than content, or in addition to it. Once in a while, every translator runs across a word or phrase that simply will not translate literally, not without an awkward re-structuring that robs it of its unique flavor. Some of these words have been imported intact into English and left alone, for effect and for convenience. For one example, why say, “the sense of pleasure drawn from another person’s misfortune,” when you can say “Schadenfreude“? For another, is there any need to say, “a certain aptitude for living daily life to the fullest,” when “a certain savoir-vivre” expresses it so nicely? In marketing, you can’t get away with this. If it’s a menu, or an advertisement, or a verbal logo printed on the wall of the lobby, it’s got to be translated into the local language in such a way that it feels invented by a native. No matter how punchy or slangy it is, it’s got to be done. This is where transcreation becomes invaluable – if there’s no direct translation that feels right, the translator must create new content tailored to the purpose of the old content, adapted for a new context. Such as?
– when McDonald’s initiated its slogan “I’m lovin’ it”, the slangy nature and rhythm of the line meant that it would have to be “transcreated” into the chain’s many, many foreign markets. The slogan took some highly creative turns on its linguistic journey. In French-speaking Canada, a literal translation of “I’m lovin’ it” would be something like “je l’aime“… too short, too bland, not enough bounce. The chosen Quebecois equivalent was “c’est ça que j’aime“, or “that’s what I like”. This was further changed to “c’est ça que j’m” – in French, the letter M has the same pronunciation as “aime”, and also evokes the Golden Arches in the slogan itself. That’s transcreation!
– transcreation gets a real chance to shine in marketing materials for the publishing world, including the titles of books themselves. You might have a hard time finding English-language books by title in a foreign bookstore, because if the original title is too specific, or too oblique, or too unwieldy to have that local flavor if translated literally, it’ll be changed. Are you a Stephen King fan? In French, The Stand becomes Le Fléau (“The Plague“), and It becomes the equally short, thought slightly different, Ça (“That“, and also the French term for the id). Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is shortened, in title only, to La Grève (“The Strike“). And if you’re looking for Stephenie Meyer’s vampire romances, you’ll find the titles greatly altered: rather than times of day and lunar phases (Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn), the books of her saga are given romantic-sounding one-word titles with the same three-letter ending (Fascination, Tentation, Hésitation and Révélation).
– in the same manner, films are often creatively retitled for foreign markets. Sometimes an American film’s new moniker will be somewhat poetic, compared to its blunt original title. In France once again, Jaws is called Les Dents de la mer (“The Teeth of the Sea“), while Alien becomes the rather sinister Le Huitième passager (“The Eighth Passenger“). And sometimes, the new title just has to spell it all out – the holiday comedy Home Alone, with Macaulay Culkin left by himself in the house for Christmas after his family forgets him, has as its French title Maman, j’ai raté l’avion! (“Mom, I Missed the Plane!“)
