Benefits and Best Practices of Advertising Translation
Let’s imagine a scenario: you’re on holiday somewhere warm and beautiful — a tropical island, the Mediterranean, take your pick — and you’re enjoying the culture and the sights. You might have only had a week to learn some of the language before you set off, but you’re sure you’ll get by fine.
Okay, so there aren’t any major issues, but you keep getting funny looks from people when you say certain things. Eventually, someone is kind enough to explain that you’ve been getting words wrong the entire time!
Whilst it’s unlikely in most cultures that anyone would outright laugh at you when you’re clearly making an effort, they may not be able to understand you, or you may be inadvertently saying something rude or funny. One wrong letter, or a tiny change in emphasis, can make a huge difference.
The same thing applies to translating content; these little errors can have a huge impact. Whilst people are often pretty patient with tourists, we don’t always apply that patience to marketing. If a product is advertised in your language, but the wording or grammar isn’t quite right, you’re less likely to buy it.
But what if it was written properly? What if the translation not only made complete sense, but also resonated with you? If it used phrases and references that were familiar to you because of your language and culture, would you even know it had been translated at all?
This is where the special niche of advertising translation comes in.
What is advertising translation?
Advertising translations are unique — they’re written to suggest, communicate, provoke, and evoke. They’re designed to sell. They have to get the same message across, and elicit the same emotions and reactions, as in the original text.
Advertising translations require not just an accurate translation, but also a consideration of the cultural references, idioms, and wordplay from the source text. In other words, translators of advertising texts must go beyond a literal translation of the text, and adapt the message to the target audience; advertising translation goes beyond a simple, literal translation, and enters the world of localisation and transcreation.
Transcreation, also known as creative translation, is the act of adapting a text into another language whilst making sure it fits with the new target audience. The text is rewritten to make more sense in the target language, and to hit cultural notes and nuances that a simple translation would miss.
Advertising translation requires localisation and transcreation, as well as marketing translation expertise, because of its purpose. Any copy that’s designed to sell something must be creative, concise, easy to understand, and — depending on your style — even a touch whimsical. This can rarely be achieved all at once with a literal translation because of all the cultural nuance that’s involved. Different audiences need to see different things for it to have the same effect.
How does good advertising translation help my business?
The benefits of professional advertising translation are boundless; you can find yourself with a larger customer base, as well as a better international brand reputation. You won’t just be reaching new customers, you’ll be reaching them effectively and keeping them engaged. It’s all in the details.
So how exactly does great advertising translation benefit your bottom line?
Maximises international reach by adapting message
By translating advertising texts and visual elements so they resonate better with the intended audience, you increase the number of people who are likely to interact with your brand. A clear message that your audience can relate to is essential in advertising texts, and advertising translations are no different.
Transcreation is the translation service that will achieve this, as instead of a literal translation of your advertisements, transcreation specialists make changes that ensure that the text is completely suitable for your audience.
If you want to grow your customer or client base and increase your conversions, the key lies in great translations that consider the audience.
Keeps a positive vibe
With all the diversity in human culture, it can be easy to fall into the trap of making something that seems fine in your original market, but doesn’t sit well in a new one.
There are certain countries where something that’s totally acceptable, or even encouraged, may be considered rude elsewhere. Take noodles for example — everyone loves noodles! But did you know that in some East Asian countries, slurping your noodles is considered good manners? In Japan, the custom dates back to the Edo period, and is widely regarded as polite.
A Japanese advertisement for noodles that encourages slurping, for example, wouldn’t go down well in Western countries, where it’s usually considered rude to eat loudly. At best, it may just seem confusing, but at worst, it might look like you’re encouraging bad manners!
Advertising translation, when done right, takes all of this into account, and ensures that your message is adapted to omit anything that may have a negative effect. Transcreation and localisation services are excellent choices to ensure you keep the positive vibes you need, as the text will be adapted to suit the culture it’s targeting.
Helps your message make sense
This one is possibly the most important — or the one we want to make sure really sticks with you, at least.
Advertising translation must ensure that your message makes sense.
So, what exactly does that mean?
In short, it means that your audience needs to understand what you’re trying to say. If they don’t, they’re unlikely to stop and think about it or investigate further — they’ll just carry on with their lives and forget all about you.
It’s not just about making sense though — it also has to have the same effect as the original message. The point of advertisements is to persuade, after all! You want the audience to take action (usually to buy), and you can’t do that if your message is unclear.
Saves you time on research (when done by a professional)
Using a professional advertising translation service means that you get a native speaker who specialises in the art of advertising translation.
In real terms, this means they already know the ins and outs of the culture and language you’re targeting. They’ve done the research for you — often because they’ve lived it themselves for many years. They are the best source of knowledge and authority when it comes to what’s likely to work, and you should take full advantage of all the expertise they have to offer.
Allowing a professional, native speaker to do the work for you means you spend less time researching the target audience yourself, reducing stress and saving time for other responsibilities.
Best practices for advertising translation
Advertising translation is a complex beast. It requires a lot of knowledge, experience, and talent to be able to do it right. If you want to succeed and live up to the dreams you have for your brand, it needs to be taken seriously and done well.
In that case, how do you achieve the perfect advertising translation?
To answer that question, we’ve put together some of the most common best practices for perfecting advertising translations, so you have a better idea as to how the whole thing works. A quick peek under the hood, so to speak.
Adapt for channel
The channel your advertisement is going to be placed on is important.
Whether it’s for social media, a website, or a pay-per-click Google ad, your message will need to be adapted to best suit the channel it’s on. The tone, style, word count, and even the general message can all change depending on where you want to place it.
Advertising translation, when done by a professional, accounts for this, because many advertising translation specialists will have expertise in certain channels. The agency you choose to work with (like ZippyLingo, for example!) will make sure that your advertising translation is placed with the best person for the job.
Check the relevance of your claims
If your advertisement makes a claim of some sort, make sure it is still relevant to the market and is accurate for the target country. It’s easy to forget that not every culture cares about data from other countries, but it makes sense when you think about it.
For instance, saying ‘43% of Americans’ in your Norwegian advertising isn’t going to hold much weight, because it has no relevance to the audience. They know what America is, but they also know that their culture is vastly different — what works in the US may not work in Norway, so that statistic won’t really mean anything to them.
It’s best to make sure that any data claims you make are relevant to the country you’re targeting. You’re better off choosing statistics from the country itself, from a neighbouring or ‘sister’ country with close ties, or from the world as a whole (global or non-location-dependent statistics).
Make sure you consider copy length
The length of your text may pose an issue if you don’t consider it before undertaking your advertising translation. Some languages have longer average words than English, such as Thai or German, which means the overall text is likely to be longer.
This may be an issue if you’re working with a medium or platform that has limited space. You’ll need to make sure that your translator is experienced with condensing down the wording whilst still retaining the message, so you can make sure it all fits.
Measure performance and adapt when necessary
The key to any successful marketing campaign is to measure how it performs. You can use your analytics to see how many people saw it, how much engagement it got, and what users did after engaging with the advert (whether it led to a conversion, for example).
Once you have the data, you can adapt accordingly. If your advertising messages aren’t performing as they should be, they may not be as suitable as you thought. Try tweaking them a little (with help from your translator, of course), and continue to measure their performance to look for improvement.
Consider the context
Advertising could easily be considered something of an art form. It needs to get across information about what you stand for and what the benefits of your products are, and it needs to incorporate your USPs (unique selling points). But it needs to do all of that in a way that’s memorable, interesting, and engaging.
To achieve this, some brands will use humour, current affairs, or pop culture references, but these rarely translate well when text is literally translated.
Why? Because context matters. To be successful, your advertising translation needs to fit within cultural and linguistic contexts so it resonates with your audience. This is where transcreation really shines, as it focuses on the overall context of your message and adapts it to the culture you’re targeting.
In terms of translation, there are usually three main types of context that matter.
1. Cultural
Any advertising translation is bound to contain certain nuances that are unique to the culture and language it’s aimed at. These nuances may be easily understood and appreciated by the target audience, but go unnoticed by, or even seem confusing to, people outside of it.
Cultural context is all about experiences and backgrounds. People will have a different world view and different values based on the way they grow up and the place they come from. What may seem common and even ‘the default’ to you might not resonate with someone from a different background, because everyone has a different ‘normal’.
That’s why it’s important to consider the cultural context; you need to account for the differences in cultures by adapting the way you talk to certain people. The tone you use, how you frame things, and the assumptions you make in order to persuade — they all rely on cultural context.
2. Rhetorical
Your advertising translation can be as persuasive as you like, but it won’t mean much if your message doesn’t balance with what the audience knows about your brand.
Rhetorical context is about the circumstances surrounding something. For example, if your brand is a big oil company that’s advertising clean energy, this might not sit well if the rhetorical context isn’t factored in properly.
Essentially, why are you doing what you’re doing? Does it match up with your brand and your product? If not, you need to explain it.
If the aforementioned big oil company is upfront and honest about the environmental damage the industry causes — and shows a genuine desire to move forward and begin to help and heal the environment — that might sit a bit better than simply persuading the audience it’s a good idea.
3. Linguistic
Linguistic context is more about the nuances of the language itself. How does your advertising content sound out of context from the whole narrative? Does it make sense? Is it likely to offend?
You need to think very carefully about the kind of language you use. Many languages have different rules or standards for polite conversation, from verb conjugation to pronoun usage, and getting that wrong could mean offending your audience.
Is advertising translation right for you?
We’ve walked you through making sure your claims are relevant, ensuring the length of your text is just right, and why transcreation is such an important part of advertising translation. We’ve also outlined the key benefits of translation done right, and defined what it really means.
But do you really need it? More importantly, do you need it to be done by a professional?
Regardless of your business specs, we definitely think it’s worth it; a professional advertising translator will be a native speaker of the target language, and a specialist marketing writer who knows the right way to talk to your audience. No cutting corners, no risk of big slip-ups — a professional is geared up to getting it right from the very start.
At ZippyLingo, we pride ourselves on the quality of our advertising translation, and we always like to go that extra mile to ensure you have the best experience and the best end result.
