Key factors in Translating Advertising
What makes advertising engaging? The ability to speak to consumers’ needs, motives, emotions in a style that consumers respond to best. What determines and affects consumers’ behavior and communication style?
Consumers’ cultural values.
Perception and understanding of the world go through a cultural lens before influencing consumers’ needs, motives, emotions. The cultural lens also shapes the consumers’ interpersonal communication style, which is how they receive and respond to the world around them.
Effective global advertising uses cultural values and culturally appropriate communication styles to reach its global audience. Research has shown that depending on continent and country, these communication styles vary. For example, in the US, advertising uses rhetoric and humor in the communication style, whereas in Europe, it is more structure focused. In Asia, symbolism & metaphor are used in advertising communication. (De Mooij, 2014, ResearchGate).
Given these important factors of cultural values and culturally appropriate communication styles in advertising, translating advertisement becomes like paining the tip of an iceberg. The key is the proper acknowledgment of the iceberg below. Here are three fundamental areas that translators explore and analyze before translating an ad.
Communication objective & core message
Communication objective in advertising is the intended goals of an advertising or promotional program – to inform, to persuade or to remind. These objectives are more specifically defined as:
- creating awareness
- imparting knowledge
- projecting an image
- shaping attitudes
- stimulating a want or desire
- effecting a sale
When the objective is identified and confirmed, the translator understands the core message more clearly. The objective then becomes conveying that exact message in a different language for an audience of a different culture in a communication style that is most natural to that audience.
Culture & mindset of target audience
Backed by Harvard Professor Ted Levitt’s article called ‘The Globalization of Markets’, common misconception is that as a result of converging technology and emerging global media, globalization of markets where consumer wants and needs have homogenized, is happening currently.
However, there has been no empirical evidence to support the argument that homogenization of tastes, needs and motives of consumers across the world has occurred. On the contrary, there is recent evidence of increased heterogenization of consumer behavior (De Mooij 2003).
Sensitivity to culture and mindset of target audience in a foreign market, is essential when adapting or translating ads developed in one culture for use in others (Anholt 2000:5): “Translating advertising copy is like painting the tip of an iceberg and hoping the whole thing will turn red. What makes copy work is not the words themselves, but subtle combinations of those words, and most of all the echoes and repercussions of those words within the mind of the reader. These are precisely the subtleties which translation fails to convey. Advertising is not made of words but made of culture.”
Faced with this challenge, nevertheless, skilled translators with expertise in copywriting in their native language, can make the transference of message from one language into another through meticulous and informative transcreation of copy.
Word choice for maximum impact
Transcreation is the translation of advertising copy from one language into another, to convey a message in a culturally appropriate style. With freedom to focus primarily on cultural elements, in this process, the translator creates a list of words for the right communication objective, then selects the most impactful ones and puts them in a style that is most relevant to the target audience.
Painting the tip of an iceberg with indication of its enormity is not an easy task. Neither is translating advertising. Working with professionals in the field would be the right thing to do. For transcreation and copywriting services, contact www.brandedtranslations.com or www.marketingtranslationagency.com
