What Translating Advertising and Marketing Materials Means
August 25, 2011
Trying to do a literal translation of an advertisement – both the copy and the graphic message – is dangerous territory. What works in one language could easily mean something else entirely in another, meaning that a literal translation of your marketing materials could do more harm than good!
To translate advertising means to produce an ad in a target setting for a target purpose and target addressees in target circumstances. What’s interesting about this approach to translating is that it mentions nothing about source text and related ‘translation jargon’.
That’s because when it comes to translating advertising, the source text should serve no further purpose than providing background information. This is because translation is a type of transfer, where communicative verbal and non verbal signs are transferred from one language to another and, further, that the transfer contains an intention while being part of a situation.
As situations are embedded in cultures, any evaluation of a particular situation, of its verbalized and non-verbalized elements, depends on the status it has in a particular culture system. (Vermeer, H. J. (1987) “What does it mean to translate?” Indian Journal of Applied Linguistics 13-)
What this all means is that, in advertising, the key message the advertiser wants to communicate to another culture or market is not necessarily the key message the advertiser wants to communicate to another culture or market.
So, the place to start is to pinpoint the key message and then work with a translation and copywriting service that is able to advise on how best to translate that message into the language (both verbal and visual) of the targeted culture or market.