Why Bad Translation Is Bad for Business

I was reading an article on the BBC today about how Iranian state media isn't happy about some English-language clothing and claims it to be offensive. If you're interested in the story, you can find the article here. This got me thinking about some of the awful English I've seen on clothes around the world.

Whenever I find myself outside of the UK or English-speaking countries, I can't help but giggle to myself when I see someone wearing clothing with terrible or poorly translated English on it. If you'd like to amuse yourself with nonsense English, a quick internet search will reveal plenty of brilliant nonsense that people unknowingly sport on their t-shirts as they leave the house. One of my personal favourites is "The pig is full of many many cats", whatever that's supposed to mean.

This phenomenon extends far beyond clothing, though. There are also examples of bad English tattoos, which are far more unfortunate than a dodgy translation on a t-shirt (and a lot more painful to get rid of). The internet is a also great resource for finding them, including (but not limited to): "I'm awsome", "beliefe in dreams", and "What didn't killed me, made me stronger".

These examples are unfortunate for some, but not really a problem. However, bad translation has become a problem in South Korea, where the government has had to set up a task force dealing with horrendous menu translations. Food experts and language experts are helping create better restaurant translations in English, Chinese, and Japanese. There's another good article from the BBC about it here.

If you're buying or making a cheap t-shirt, you probably don't care about hiring a professional to translate or proofread it before it goes into production. If you're getting a tattoo on a drunken night out, you're probably beyond the point of thinking twice about the spelling, grammar, and punctuation that's going to be put permanently on your body.

Good translations can sell good products.

What really gets me, when it comes to restaurants, hotels, and plenty of other businesses, is how little some seem to care about their translations. I've seen so many horrendous restaurant menus (in some very good restaurants, too) that could have been translated perfectly, but weren't.

Maybe it's to save some money. Maybe there's someone at your restaurant who's pretty good at a foreign language, so why don't you get them to translate your menu? That's a huge mistake! Restaurant menus, in terms of words, are generally quite short and simple for a professional translator.

These kinds of documents are a piece of cake for a qualified professional native translator, especially one who lives or has lived in your country, is familiar with the cuisine, and will create a better and tastier-sounding menu than Google Translate or a staff member who's okay when it comes to chatting to foreign customers.

The same goes for all documentation across all businesses. When someone visits your business, whether in person or online, you don't want a poor translation representing you. In a busy market, customers will stop at places where they know what they're getting, not places where they're confused as to what's on offer. Is it really worth running that risk with nonsensical translations?

I certainly don't think so, and I'm fairly certain our fellow language lovers will agree with me. To deliver a proper message in a foreign language, you need a real translator!

What are some of the worst translations you've ever seen? Did it put you off doing business with them? Tell us about your terrible or hilarious experiences in the comments below!

Localizing the Aisle: The Power of "Foreign Branding"

Whenever I go to a massive 24-hour supermarket, I'm confronted by tonnes and tonnes of different choices across plenty of different products from all over the world. I'm not here to get into a debate about giant supermarket chains killing local family-owned stores or price wars, but rather how language plays a part in everything we do.

Despite being a huge fan of pizza (of all shapes and sizes), I still find it difficult when I purchase Dr Oetker brand pizzas due to the fact that the German name doesn't sound as authentic in my head as any Italian-sounding brands.

Mmm... pizza.

My conviction isn't strong enough to stop me buying the brand since I enjoy their pizzas, after all. However, some people would not buy the late August Oetker's pizzas, regardless of whether or not he had a PhD. Marketers are fully aware of this process, so you'll find that products with names that don't match their origin or perceived origin appear to be in the minority in your supermarket.

Berghaus

The outdoor clothing company was founded in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the '60s and chose the name from a very liberal German translation of "LD Mountain Centre", where they were first based, for the name of their company. I speak from experience when I say that the brand name was rarely pronounced correctly in Newcastle by locals wearing the full-length draa-string borg-hoos jackets, as they were called locally.

Dolmio

If you've ever seen the "when'sa your Dolmio day?" adverts, you'll get that this brand really wants you to believe that their range of pasta sauces are far more Italian that Dr. Oetker's pizzas. However, the Dolmio brand is actually Australian and owned by the American company Mars, Inc.

We're sorry if these photos made you hungry.

Häagen-Dazs

Häagen-Dazs is probably one of the oldest examples of this kind of thing. Originally, the name was a tribute to Denmark by founders Reuben and Rose Mattus to a country they felt had treated the Jews fantastically during World War II. However, the name itself is little more than nonsense made up by Reuben to sound Danish. Danish speakers will be fully aware of this as there are no umlauts in Danish nor "z" and "s" appearing together as they do here.

The company actually fought another ice cream brand in the '80s for trying a similar marketing strategy. Frusen Glädjé was an American company that used an alteration of the Swedish for "frozen delight" as their name (the "é" should be without the diacritic).

Matsui

The name may sound Japanese, but when UK electrical retailer Currys launched the brand with the slogan "Japanese Technology Made Perfect" and a logo reminiscent of a traditional Japanese "rising sun", they ended up in trouble for misleading customers. They were forced to get rid of the tagline.

Despite a fine, they were allowed to keep the name, which upset a number of British veterans of World War II who remembered the Japanese general Iwane Matsui, the man responsible for the Nanking Massacre in 1937, which resulted in the deaths of between 40,000 and 300,000 people (depending on who you ask).

Trader Joe's

The American chain of grocery stores sells a number of its own brands. Rather than slapping a label that says "Trader Joe's" on all of their products, they sell products under various names.

Mexican food is labelled as "Trader Jose's", Chinese food goes by "Trader Ming's", the Italian range is "Trader Giotto's", and then "Trader Jacques'" is the name of the French stuff. While it may seem overly simple and incapable of fooling anyone, they wouldn't do it if it didn't work!

Trolling For Hits: Deceptive Headlines

In a move that would have the plain language cause turning in its grave (if it was dead and not just a concept), it seems that news sources and other websites love a bit of trolling.

Using this image entitles you to be a dick on the internet.

The idea that news sources use misleading headlines to boost their hits was brought to our attention by the current affairs and humour website The Gabbler (definitely check it out!), which suggested that even the most reputable sources are using this dirty tactic in order to get more hits and in turn, more money.

We remember seeing a local newspaper article saying that "Brangelina" were coming to town. It turned out that the article was referring to them "in films" and that a new cinema was being constructed. It's fairly annoying to have given a site a hit just because you've been deceived, but if you look at most "headlines" you'll see it's the way the internet works and the same can be said for print too.

If you've ever read Hello!, OK! or any other publication that features a general salutation proceeded by an exclamation mark, shame on you. You should know better! However, their headlines are clear... they correspond directly to the shit that's in the article.

However, seemingly reputable sources regularly use misleading headlines to get people to read their articles. They're usually well written, but they're based on fact and probably don't garner as much attention as so require a little sprucing up. 

So many things to read... how to choose?
By the most interesting headlines, of course!

So here are the two options for every journo:

Clear headlines

They may appear dull and possibly deter readership.  It's a fine line and we feel the right answer depends solely on the material. For newspapers and facts, clear language is key. The BBC's news site normally has decent headlines but we must admit they've fooled us a few times.

Creative headlines:

"Creative" headlines seem more interesting than the article really is and in turn increase readership. As long as the article isn't posing as fact, what's the problem? They won't be the first people to have tricked you so they can earn some money and you won't be paying anything. Language can be creative and beautiful, and it should be enjoyed.

So...?

Which side wins in the end? Are we sticklers for thinking that language should be matter of fact? Or can news be creative? The best headlines grab your attention. If clicking on a link or picking up the newspaper is encouraged by an intriguing headline is it such a bad thing? They do earn money from doing it... and they won't be sharing that money with you despite having tricked you. At least you can take solace in the fact that they have encouraged people to read!

What's In A Font?

More often than not, such as now, you read text rendered by a computer. The ways in which this text is rendered and styled are known as fonts. A font is a character set consisting of a single typeface.

There are two types of fonts: serifs and sans serifs. What are serifs? They're the little tails on letters that are supposed to make them easier to read. Times New Roman, anyone? Arial, on the other hand, is a sans serif font as the letters do not feature any of these strokes.

We're not talking about golf strokes!

There are proportional and monospaced fonts too. In monospaced fonts each character occupies an identical-sized space, whereas proportional fonts give each character a space relative to its size. Typewriters required monospaced fonts, but nowadays most people use computers that often employ proportional fonts, which people usually find to be easier on the eyes.

For those of you who are unaware, this terrifying machine is
a typewriter. People used them to type back in the old days...

Is it that important which font you use as long as it can be read? Yes! For example, don't write your CV (or résumé) in Comic Sans! It makes it look like a joke... albeit not a funny one. Fonts blend linguistics and design together, using written language as an art form.

Fonts can be important...so important that certain companies copyright and trademark them. They can even become synonymous with a brand. When Sony launched the PS3, it came under some criticism for its use of the "Spider-Man" font. Instead of creating a new font, it decided to simply use the font that its film division had created for the Spider-Man movies since it already had the legal rights to it. Apparently, they were afraid of getting into legal battles if their potential new font was too similar to someone else's!

As you can see, there's much more to fonts than meets the eye!

Language In Business: Sounds Foreign?

Cultural identity is closely tied to language... so closely that marketers have long exploited this idea for personal gain. Pesky marketers!

Not everything you buy is from where you think is! We'll start with perhaps the most famous example of foreign branding: Häagen-Dazs ice cream. Sounds German, right? Or Scandanavian? You're miles off! The famous ice-cream brand was actually founded by Jewish-Polish immigrants in the US. Clearly Polish, Hebrew or just plain English didn't sound delicious enough! Danish doesn't have an umlaut or a "zs", though the name was an homage to Denmark's fantastic treatment of Jews during the Second World War, when thousands of Jews were helped to evade capture by the Nazis. The labels on the ice cream initially had a map of Denmark on them too.

Another example is women's athletic shoe brand Rykä. It looks Scandinavian too, but is actually an American brand! Perhaps they were trying to make the brand sound a bit more exotic... or simply thought that American women would prefer Scandinavinan-sounding shoes.

Imagine running in these Scandinavian shoes!

The Dolmio brand, currently running adverts that say "When'sa your Dolmio day?" is actually part of Masterfoods, from Australia. Most people probably wouldn't buy pasta sauce with the tagline "G'day! When's your Dolmio day, mate?". Italians are world-renowned experts in all things pasta-related, so it's natural that they chose an Italian-sounding name.

If anyone has been to Britain and seen a chav, then they probably know what a Berghaus is. For those who haven't, it's a mountaineering coat worn by poorly-behaved cretins, and occasionally, people climbing mountains. The brand is actually from the UK and was originally called LD Mountain Centre. They tried to translate "mountain" and "centre" into German and got "Berghaus".

For those of you who don't know what a chav is,
here's a decent example of how one dresses.

Finally, we have the Pret a Manger sandwich chain. Despite its French name, it is a British company. Someone thought it would be clever to use the French term prêt à porter (ready-to-wear) and substitute manger (to eat) for porter... thus perfectly describing their "ready to eat" food, while filling your mind with thoughts of elegant French cuisine.

Marketers are experts at manipulating language to make people succumb to the lure of exotic foreign branding. There's a reason most frozen pizza brands sound Italian... it makes you think of delicious homemade Italian pizza, when in reality their product tastes like cardboard. You know their tricks now, so don't be fooled!

The Worst Translations In Business

Yesterday we talked about copywriters, and today we're looking at selling your products abroad with some of our favourite examples of translation.

Does anyone remember the cleaning product Jif? If you don't, thank god you have your youth. Everyone else probably remembers it as the old name of Cif. A team of highly-skilled marketers had a few too many coffees and decided that Spaniards, amongst others, were not to fond of trying to say the word. However, listeners were happy to no longer be covered in spit.

The once-famous Marathon bar (at least in the UK and Ireland) was renamed Snickers because the word was more globally recognisable. You can't always just rename your products to be international, so sometimes individual names are required for languages or regions.

Snickers or Marathon... who cares? It's delicious!

You have to consider regional differences. Coca-Cola famously introduced an advert into an Arabic-speaking region with no text, just icons of a sad face, some Coca-Cola, and then a happy face. Obviously, the intended message was that "Coca-Cola makes you happy". However, they didn't think about the fact that Arabic reads right to left, which left the ad being read as happy face, Coca-Cola, and sad face. The ad was a resounding failure.

Colloquialisms are fantastic stumbling blocks for marketers as well. "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux" wasn't the best tagline for the Swedish vacuum manufacturer to place in advertisements in the United States. General Motors' Nova never did well in Latin America either, due to sounding like "no va", as in "doesn't go" in Spanish.

Toyota failed with their MR2 in France since the name in French sounds similar to "merde", meaning shit. The car did poorly, but Toyota are probably more concerned about recalls at the moment.

In the 1960s, "Come alive with the Pepsi generation" was wrongly translated as "Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave" for Chinese adverts. This was much to the delight of Coca-Cola... until they managed to name their product "Bite the wax tadpole" and "female horse stuffed with wax". They eventually worked on it and came up with "happiness in the mouth" after researching thousands of Chinese characters.

Is Pepsi okay? Uhm... maybe not.

With globalisation these errors are becoming less and less common as businesses become more aware of cultural differences. Nevertheless, sites like Engrish.com are a fine example that not everyone is paying for the professional assistant they require... and if they are, they're being ripped off!

If you're dining in a restaurant in Lisbon, Portugal, please try the "sawdust" as we'd love to know what it is! We didn't have the cojones to try it last time!

Before anyone complains, we know that some of these examples aren't necessarily true, but we bet you enjoyed them anyway! Many of them feature frequently in marketing textbooks so they're clearly of educational merit... we suppose.

Language In Business: Copywriting

Businessmen love money... who doesn't? It may be true that it doesn't bring happiness but we're always happier on payday than when we're counting our pennies at the supermarket.

This is what your time and effort is worth.

How do you get money? You could work. Work is quite simply doing something you don't want to do and being paid for it by someone so they don't have to do it themselves.

Maybe you had a killer idea and you created something that people will want. That's fantastic, but how do you get people to buy it?

You have to convince them. You're definitely not the first person to make something people want and probably not the first person to make the product you're hoping to sell. Perhaps you have one tool at your disposal that others have ignored: language. There's good money for those who can use their language (or languages) well, be it in the form of copywriting, translation or interpreting.

How important is good copy? A lot of small businesses will overlook a professional writer in order to save money... who could blame them, given the economy is thriving like worms in an aviary? The issue is that not everyone writes the same way, with the same message. A person who writes for their own business may leave out key information that their customers want to hear.

Who's going to write your copy... you? Dream on!

Many readers are put off and confused by pretentious language, complicated sentence structure and long-winded messages. Short and simple, right? The language needs to be prioritised to make sure the main selling points are clear and concise.

Then there's register (we talked about this a while ago, read the original post here). Are you communicating with your customers? Is the register appropriate to what you're selling? Would the Ritz have "Yo dude! Come to our totally awesome hotel!" on their brochure? Would a cheap and cheerful hostel need to read like Chaucer?

The words have to be picked carefully. Not every word has the same meaning for readers, just like awesome in the previous example. We doubt most people would think of the original meaning of the word rather than its contemporary usage.

Why is it "I'm lovin' it" and not "I'm enjoying it"? Think about the strength of the words and the message the company wants to convey. Whether it's crap meat or not, you'll likely be more inclined to buy a Big Mac rather than a Larger-Than-Usual Mac.