Make sure your slogan and your marketing materials are understood abroad.
You did it! You managed to grow your business too big for your home country. Now you have the exciting opportunity to expand into new ones. When doing so, you need to make sure every detail of your business is translated correctly.
Translation of Slogans to Extend Your Business to Foreign Countries
A word-for-word translation of your slogan can be extremely problematic. Mistakes often occur because language holds nuances and hidden pitfalls that a literal translation cannot avoid. Sometimes literal translations of slogans can become nonsensical, comical, or even offensive.
Who’s Already Been Found Guilty?
There have been many examples already. Even the bigger companies are not exempt from poor literal translated slogans. Pepsi’s Chinese translation of “Come alive with Pepsi” ended up meaning “Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead”.
It might be a jinx on the beverage companies but Coors also made a big error with their slogan translation : unfortunately, “Turn it loose” became “Suffer from diarrhoea”. Visit our blog.
Translation of Slogans – What’s the Solution?
The best solution to this problem is to employ a marketing team native to the country you will expand into. A marketing team will be able to take your current content and transform it into words with the intended meanings in another.
However, a good translation is often not enough, you also need transcreation. While translation is transferring the meanings of words to other words of a different language, transcreation is much more.
Transcreation takes a text and translates it with the cultural audience in mind. It allows the new foreign audience a way to identify with the text in ways translation falls short on.
What can we do for you?
Do you need to translate a campaign for a foreign language market? Contact us today.
If you want to know more about a transcreation service to ensure your business gets off to a flying start on a new venture, contact SemioticTransfer, today! We are readily available on + 41 56 470 40 40, or drop us a line at contact@semiotictransfer.ch.
