Here’s one of our favorites:

Click on the picture to see many more examples.

In a sense, most translation involves some element of transcreation. For instance, we’ve written before about the creativity involved intranslating idioms. Translating “he’s still wet behind the ears,” literally into another language might just cause foreign readers to scratch their heads. Most texts that aren’t purely technical have some elements that demand creativity on the part of the translator.

The act of transcreation applies this process to an entire text. Advertising is the biggest example of an area in which transcreation is necessary in order for the impact of the original advertising concept to be maintained across language and culture.

In marketing, transcreation is definitely on the rise. In a survey of 380 respondents by Common Sense Advisory, 25 “percent of respondents expected transcreation – as a percentage of total translation activities – to grow between six and 10% during 2010, while almost 30% anticipate that it will grow by more than 10%.” See “Apple’s Secret to Booming International Sales,” by Rebecca Ray in Chief Marketer.

Advertising isn’t the only area where translation services can demand a strong element of transcreation. For example, in a recent job for the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), we translated an activity book their Poison Control Center aimed at educating children about environmental dangers. The book contained crossword and word search puzzles that had to be completely recreated in Spanish to serve their purposes.

We faced another challenge in translating some training materials from French to English for a leadership coaching firm. The firm had come up with an acronym to describe the different components of their team facilitation process. The acronym was also a word in English and the client wanted to keep the acronym. Unfortunately, the words that it stood for and the processes they described could not simply be translated while maintaining the same acronym. Instead, alternative words and descriptions had to be worked out to maintain the acronym while conveying the same process and connotations.

A shared language doesn't ensure "communication"

As we have noted in a previous article on Global Miscommunication, just because two people are speaking the same language does not mean that they are effectively communicating.

For example, English may often be used as the language of business between countries in the European Union (EU), but continental Europeans may find that what the British mean doesn’t always seem to be exactly the same as what they say. This is the basis of the (somewhat) facetious Anglo-EU Translation Guide, a “guide to what Brits actually mean when they say something.” The guide is a chart with columns for “What the British say”, “What the British mean,” and “What others understand.”

When a Britisher says, “That’s a very brave proposal,” you may hear, “He thinks I have courage,” although what he actually means is “You are insane.” It’s kind of like the Hollywood hot shot that says, “Let’s do lunch,” when what he really means is “I’ll forget about you as soon as you’re out the door.”

Click to see City News Toronto video

This past September, the U.S. and Canada issued an action plan containing initiatives to carry forward “Beyond the Border,” a dialogue instituted in February 2011 to investigate options for joint activities to enhance perimeter security and economic competitiveness for both countries. Details of the initiatives were described in a join press conference held by President Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper on December 7, 2011.

One section of the plan covers matters pertaining to trade facilitation, economic growth and jobs. Under this portion of the plan, the U.S. and Canada pledge to have corresponding agencies from both countries work together to facilitate the flow of business and travelers between the two countries by harmonizing various regulations relating to border traffic and eliminating unnecessary restrictions, streamlining restrictions considered necessary for national physical and economic security, and putting in place new technology, practices, and infrastructure that will speed the movement of both people and goods across borders.

For example, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) have chosen to focus on two types of initiatives – those that better protect the two countries from offshore food safety and animal and plant health risks, and those that consider alternative approaches to existing activity at the U.S.-Canada border.

These discussions are ongoing, so we can expect to see continuing changes in various areas relating to economic ties between the two countries. And we can expect to see more demand for translation into French to target the sizeable French-speaking population in that country.

If you want to appeal to the French Canadian market, remember that Canadian French can be very different, especially in everyday speech, from continental French. Your language service provider should ask you what variety of French you need.

As an example of a weak future tense, he starts with German where you can say morgen regnet es – “It rains tomorrow” – rather than “It will rain” or “it is going to rain.” Does this help to explain the well known German thriftiness? After comparing data from a variety of sources on individuals and by countries, Chen concludes that using a language with a strong future tense, like English, makes people less likely to save and more likely to engage in unhealthy behaviors like overeating, smoking and avoiding physical activity. He claims that this effect comes through even when comparing similar people within the same country who speak different languages.

What languages have a weak future tense? According to Chen’s analysis, most world languages, including all the Romance language, like Spanish and French, have strong future tenses. The biggest exceptions are most Germanic languages (except English and Afrikaans), Chinese and Japanese.

As Daisy Sindelar points out in her article “Does This Language Make Me Look Fat?” on the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty website, Chen’s article is still awaiting academic review and has already received criticism from linguists. But the idea is intriguing.

One thing that is often not well understood is that, a good translation process requires that all the text that needs to be translated be “extracted” from the website pages, so that translators can use tools like translation memories, spell checkers and tools to track changes during the proofing process. This doesn’t just include the text that appears on the page. Metadata, like the page’s title and description (Figure 1); descriptions of graphics (known as “alt text”) (Figure 2); messages that appear when only when a user takes certain steps (Figure 3) – all of this must be located and extracted to a file format that the translator can work with.

Figure 1. This meta description is what shows up on search engine results

With a site composed of static HTML pages, the work of “extraction” is mainly automatic. Translators have tools that allow them to work directly with HTML files, separating the translatable text from the html tags and presenting only that text for translation. This is a slight simplification, since even in the case of a static site, however, there can be bits of text embedded in script that must be identified and manually extracted for translation. This part of the process is called localization engineering. It includes preparing the files for the translation workflow and adapting the final target files for correct online publishing.

Figure 2. Alt text shows up when you run your cursor over an image in Internet Explorer and is also used by computer readers for the blind

Most sites, however, are now built using some kind of content management system (CMS). A CMS is great for website maintenance, but may pose challenges for translation. With a content management system, the actual text that appears on the site is stored in a variety of places. Most of the content is stored in databases and is called up by code. Other content, content that repeats on various pages, is saved in one or more template files.

Figure 3. This thank you message only shows up after the user has completed the contact form.

Several of the better known CMSs say that they support translation. What they really mean is that they will support multiple versions of the site in different languages and provide a framework to store foreign language text, but the translation still has to be entered into the system. If you are making changes to a page or two, it may not be a big problem to send out the new text for translation and then simply insert the translated text as usual in the foreign language site (though you will have to think ahead about meta data, alt text, etc.) But when it comes to a whole site, or to a site that is updated significantly on a regular basis, this is far from the best way to proceed. Content will usually be missed; web developers will usually have to be involved to update templates and style sheets; the whole process will be clumsy and time-consuming.

Planning ahead for translation is particularly important when it comes to websites. This includes choosing the right CMS in the first place. At the very least, make sure that when the time comes it will support all the languages you might want, including things like the various Asian and Middle Eastern character sets and right-to-left writing scripts. Also be sure that the CMS allows for translation of the entire site, not just of individual page content. We have come across various sites with things like English menus on the foreign-language pages. This is because the CMS runs all pages off of the same template, which is not translated. At best, the CMS should allow for the export of most content into files that a translator can work directly with, such as HTML or XML files.

And when it comes time for translation, definitely choose a translation partner who is technologically savvy enough to find their way around these various systems and help set up an efficient process that can still ensure quality.

Taniguchi sued for negligence after he fell through a deck owned by Kan Pacific. He eventually lost the suit and the trial court, whose decision was upheld on appeal to the Ninth Circuit, ruled that the company could collect from Taniguchi for the cost of translating various documents in the case. Federal law allows for recovery of the costs of “compensation of interpreters,” and the court said that the translation costs fell under this category.

In the language industry, this is not even a question: Interpreters work with speech, translators work with writing. Will the Supreme Court decide that the American Translators Association and National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators are wrong. Oral arguments were held in February, so we’ll find out later this year.

It turns out that in Russia, and in many parts of the old Soviet Union, the new name can bring to mind an old Russian slang term for oral sex. The issue was first reported in Crain’sChicago Business, which heard of the possible problem from a reader. The story was immediately picked up by AdAge Global and then by the HuffingtonPost, which suggested: “Maybe it’s time Kraft Foods think about away to incorporate ‘from Russia with love’ as a new slogan.”

It can be hard to be sure a new brand name doesn’t have some bad connotations in some language somewhere, but Russia is becoming a very important market for Kraft, so you would think that research in that market would have been undertaken before deciding on the name.

My presentation focused on making writers aware of the content workflow for content that is destined to be adapted for foreign markets. I familiarized the writers with the translation and localization process, and then outlined best practices for the content creation and translation stages of the overall process.

Best practices for content writers include using authoring tools that allow them to practice controlled authoring and single sourcing, to leverage CMS tools and XML functionalities, and to make full use of available language QA tools.

In the translation process, the focus should be on terminology management and ensuring that translation memory (TM) is in place from the beginning. These practices help control costs and increase project success as well as reduce translation errors. For example, clients and project managers can agree to focus the final QA step only on translation units that are less than a 85 or 95% match to material already in the TM. This decision would depend on the nature of the content and how it would be used.

Adapted from BURTON Group 2008

Technical communicators and translators really should be each others’ advocates.  Technical communicators know the product involved and, because of this knowledge, they may not always understand when their words are ambiguous or unclear. Translators, on the other hand, can only work with the content they are given. They may be unable to detect certain inconsistencies or errors in the source text. This gap between what the technical writers think they are communicating and what the translator understands costs money. When authors and translators are not aligned, inefficiencies result and projects become more costly.

Successful localization should start with the technical communicator/author of the content. Promoting a partnership with their language services provider, and moving localization considerations from the end of the content process to the beginning, creates a situation in which a content L10N strategy can be implemented that will reduce time to market, decrease costs and facilitate global business strategies.

Let’s do this together for the benefit of our clients. It’s a win-win situation.

Myriam Siftar, president of MTM LinguaSoft, will be participating in a panel discussion on Marketing in a Global Environment on March 21, 2012. The presentation and luncheon, hosted by the Philadelphia Direct Marketing Association or PDMA, will be held at the Crowne Plaza-King of Prussia, 260 Mall Boulevard in King of Prussia. Registration is at 11:30 with the program at 12:00 to 2:00. The lunch buffet starts at 12:30.

Panel discussion topics will include:
o The climate and trends in customizing messages in a global environment
o Best practices in leveraging multiple channels
o What it takes to drive successful campaign management and ROI
o Biggest challenges
o The nuts and bolts of translation, often overlooked details
o Best Practices
o Worst mistakes
o Best successes

Non-members are welcome to attend. Click here to register. (You will be required to register on the PDMA website in order to make a reservation, but you will not need to pay for membership).