| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | How to translate when context is short Thread poster: Masoud Kakouli Varnousfaderani
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Edward Vreeburg 
Netherlands
Local time: 22:26
Member (2008)
English to Dutch
+ ...
| do your best and... | Jul 22, 2013 |
you can only do your best, translating what the customer wants, .... since they seem to be saving money on marketing/copy writer/ commercial slagon developers, who might simply take 3 days with 10 people, offsite and drive around in one of those cars in Spain, just to come up with the same 3 words... (only with a different price...)
Ed
| | | | Kay Denney
France
Local time: 22:26
French to English
In just about my first post here I mentioned that I charge a lot for this type of work.
It's not just three words, it's your corporate identity, your brand power, your signature, the words you hope will be associated with your product. For sure, if ever I hear "beauty, power" I will then think "soul" and then "ah yes that was the AM ad". Like you can't say "yes we can" without thinking of Obama (whoever you vote for, it was that powerful).
So you have to come up with ... See more In just about my first post here I mentioned that I charge a lot for this type of work.
It's not just three words, it's your corporate identity, your brand power, your signature, the words you hope will be associated with your product. For sure, if ever I hear "beauty, power" I will then think "soul" and then "ah yes that was the AM ad". Like you can't say "yes we can" without thinking of Obama (whoever you vote for, it was that powerful).
So you have to come up with something nifty and powerful and catchy and easy to remember. It might only take you a minute or two, then a couple of hours to rustle up a few links to prove how brilliant it is, to pretend you had to put a lot of thought into it. Or it might take you days. I once had to print out some pix of jewellery for a famous jeweller and left them on the kitchen table in the hopes of finding inspiration in between the layers of the cheesecake I was making (Nigel Slater's recipe in the Guardian, failproof and versatile!). I finally came up with something but I felt like my brain squeezing was akin to the proverbial blood out of stone.
John Lennon whipped up some of his best songs in no time. Who cares how long he took, the fact is that people still sing them, listen and watch the old videos, draw inspiration from them, relate to them.
However long it takes, it's the result that counts and that's what the client is paying through the nose for.
You don't do slogans at a discount. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Balasubramaniam L.
India
Local time: 01:56
Member (2006)
English to Hindi
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER | It is not usually a translation task | Jul 23, 2013 |
Slogan translation comes into the category of transcreation. You really need to get into the idea to be able to do this, and you should have perfect command of the target language to pull off a good translated/transcreated slogan. This of course doesn't mean you necessarily have to be a native of the target language.
Doing this without context is a near impossibility. In fact you need to have extremely detailed context to do this type of translation, or rather, transcreation. If you... See more Slogan translation comes into the category of transcreation. You really need to get into the idea to be able to do this, and you should have perfect command of the target language to pull off a good translated/transcreated slogan. This of course doesn't mean you necessarily have to be a native of the target language.
Doing this without context is a near impossibility. In fact you need to have extremely detailed context to do this type of translation, or rather, transcreation. If you don't have this context, you will have to ask for it from the client.
Often actually looking at the end product first hand, and talking to people who designed it, and the people who produced the original slogan helps, but this may not always be possible in all situations. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Similar situation | Jul 23, 2013 |
Balasubramaniam L. wrote:
Slogan translation comes into the category of transcreation. You really need to get into the idea to be able to do this, and you should have perfect command of the target language to pull off a good translated/transcreated slogan. This of course doesn't mean you necessarily have to be a native of the target language.
Doing this without context is a near impossibility. In fact you need to have extremely detailed context to do this type of translation, or rather, transcreation. If you don't have this context, you will have to ask for it from the client.
Often actually looking at the end product first hand, and talking to people who designed it, and the people who produced the original slogan helps, but this may not always be possible in all situations.
A similar situation is when you get a lot of text to translate, so the job is overall a normal translation, but somewhere therein there is a mostly isolated slogan for which you don't have much context, as it is cited rather than introduced or explained there. This is similar to translating some of those names that do get translated, or especially people's unique titles. A just-the-slogan translation would be a transcreation job that should be billed and supported appropriately (and differently from standard translation), but my personal belief is that a target-native marketer should be employed instead of translation. A working translation and other reference files should be there for the marketer as supporting material, but the job is a marketing job, and it makes more sense to have it performed by someone who has spent 20 years in marketing (and pay for the 20 years of marketing experience plus degrees) than someone who has spent 20 years in language (and pay for the 20 years of language experience plus degrees).
... Which is not to say that an experienced translator or other linguist would necessarily be bad at the job, but by necessity he would normally not be as good as a dedicated marketer with corresponding experience and standing in his profession.
This is doubly true for any job that actually is writing from scratch – for which it really makes no sense to insist that it be done by a translator. As in, good luck and have fun discussing the 'method of translation' which consists in writing from scratch, but hello, 'marketer' (copywriter) is the name of the profession that actually does that type of writing. From scratch.
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| transcreation | Jul 23, 2013 |
While it is correct that putting a slogan into another language is more transcreation than translation, there is a little more to it than that.
First of all, some translators offer more than just translation services, and charge accordingly. Look this way!
Secondly, the client asking for a translation may not understand the slogan in the original language and need a translation, however basic, to decide what to do next. You cannot refer the matter to an expert in the target language ... See more While it is correct that putting a slogan into another language is more transcreation than translation, there is a little more to it than that.
First of all, some translators offer more than just translation services, and charge accordingly. Look this way!
Secondly, the client asking for a translation may not understand the slogan in the original language and need a translation, however basic, to decide what to do next. You cannot refer the matter to an expert in the target language unless you can brief that person, giving a flavour of what you want them to produce. After that, it is indeed a matter of adapting the concept to the local culture. It may be, with the example given, that "beauty, power and soul" would not be strong selling points in Farsi.
Thirdly, while literal translations usually will not work, sometimes (and the example given may well be a case in point) a literal translation may just prove fine. So while it is fair to say that "literal" is usually wrong, a blanket statement of this nature is unwise.
Last but not least, when translating market-oriented texts, annual reports, press releases, etc. translators often have titles and sub-titles for which they have to find something snappy. The process is much akin to translating slogans. Again, it is vital to allow for context, for word play, for alliteration and all the other things present in the original. The example quoted of "breast is best" giving "le sein c'est plus sain" is an excellent example of how to find something that rhymes, contains alliteration (albeit changing from "b" to "s") and largely maintaining the same meaning. Someone had a good day there. Was it a translator or a slogan writer working straight from English or via a rough French translation, we have no way of knowing....
My advice to translators faced with slogans would be a) ask the client why he needs a translation (as a cheap deal instead of paying an expert or to brief the expert); b) if you agree to take a shot, make sure you are paid properly for your work; c) check if there are copyright issues. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Balasubramaniam L.
India
Local time: 01:56
Member (2006)
English to Hindi
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER | Slogan translation is one area where more heads are better than one | Jul 23, 2013 |
While I was in a job situation we used to do a lot of interpretation of national parks, wildlife sanctuaries and heritage sites. We worked in multi-disciplinary teams consisting of writers, copyeditors, translators, designers, artists, photographers, subject experts and DTP specialists.
One aspect of interpretation were the phototext panels and wayside exhibits which required creative writing to grab the attention of passing visitors and to make them read them. One trick we used wa... See more While I was in a job situation we used to do a lot of interpretation of national parks, wildlife sanctuaries and heritage sites. We worked in multi-disciplinary teams consisting of writers, copyeditors, translators, designers, artists, photographers, subject experts and DTP specialists.
One aspect of interpretation were the phototext panels and wayside exhibits which required creative writing to grab the attention of passing visitors and to make them read them. One trick we used was to make the title of the panels and wayside exhibits eyecatching.
This is similar to slogan writing.
We did the titles last and as the team consisted of several writers, translators and copyeditors, we all got together in a room and reviewed each panel/wayside and while reviewing we would suggest suitable titles. Each titles would be discussed threadbare and often someone would pick up on a suggestion made by another person and improve on it and this would go on until we arrived at a mutually satisfactory title. In most cases the titles arrived at in this collective way were much more superior to what an individual writer or translator could come up.
Unfortunately, freelance translators rarely work in a group, but where they do, creative translation like slogan translation is best achieved by several heads getting together and working on it.
I believe that is how creative ad texts are also done. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Kay Denney
France
Local time: 22:26
French to English
I agree with Bala!
As a PM cum translator in an agency, I used to set up groups of translators to brainstorm slogans. It was quite complicated, toing and froing by mail, of course nowadays everyone would simply skype each other. But it was really great fun and I thoroughly enjoyed the process which was much as Bala described for the titles of wayside panels.
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