Lost in Translation

Have You Ever Realised What Could Happen if Your Brand Message is Delivered Incorrectly?

Or what if your clients perceive something else about your brand message while you want to convey something entirely different?

That could pose a pretty bad impression on your brand image; unfortunately, there are many instances in which such incidents have happened. It often occurs when companies globalise their brand through cross-cultural campaigns.

But how is that possible when your brand message is the same for a specific marketing campaign? Well, one of the major reasons could be a poor translation used in such campaigns that might miscommunicate the brand message. These “miscommunications” often happen due to a lack of cultural awareness and nuances when a brand literally translates the brand message from one language to another.

How Bad Could the Consequences Be?

The consequences could be really bad, believe us!

Let’s understand this through an example. Suppose you work for an organisation where you have a decent image, and everyone admires you. Now, consider you are transferred to a different team abroad where people are not fluent in English. To communicate with them, you used an ordinary word-to-word translator.

Unfortunately, one day, you wrote an email to your project head using that translator that turned out to be offensive in their regional language. What he understood of your message was entirely different from what you wanted to convey. However, due to a poor translation lacking cultural relevance and understanding, you were thrown out of the project at the same moment.

And that’s not it. Although you had a good image among the team you last worked with, the incident severely impacted that, too.

Well, you might have understood the message here. The same can happen with your brand image too. Remember, just because a marketing campaign poses a success story in one country does not necessarily mean it would also be a hit in the global markets. In fact, for the worse, such global campaigns can go far beyond offending the international markets.

Without the assistance of an experienced, culturally adaptive, and aware team that helps your business talk like a local, it would be challenging to recreate an authentic and resonating brand message in the global market.

Some Epic Fails in Global Branding: When the Catch-Phrases Caught Despair!

Electrolux

The Sweden home appliances company entered the US market to promote one of their vacuum cleaners with the tagline: “Nothing sucks like an Electrolux.“

Although the sentence was grammatically correct, it also had a double entendre, meaning Electrolux is good for nothing. Well, who will buy something that’s of no use at all?

Pepsi

One of the famous examples of the translation-gone-wrong category is Pepsi. When the company entered the Chinese market, the translation of its marketing campaign “Pepsi Brings You Back to Life.” went way more literal than expected.

In Chinese, the translated version of the tagline meant “Pepsi Brings Your Ancestors Back from the Grave.” It wasn’t only humoristic but left a bad impression on the nation whose people believe in ancestor worship as a part of their culture.

 ADD THE ACTUAL CHINESE TEXT

Perdue Chicken

American chicken company Perdue Chicken came up with a clever tagline, “It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken.” to enhance brand awareness. However, their branding strategy went wrong when they entered the Spanish market.

The translated version of this message ended up something like this, “It takes a sexually stimulated man to make a chicken affectionate.” Well, neither the line made sense nor this marketing campaign in Spain!

ADD THE ACTUAL SPANISH TEXT

Coors

One of the oldest and most popular brewing companies in America, Coors has also been a victim of the wrong context and translation. Their advertising team introduced a campaign with the slogan “Turn It Loose!” in the Spanish market to appeal to the people having a good time while drinking their beverage.

However, the idea went entirely different as the meaning of this phrase as per direct translation in Spanish was “Suffer from Diarrhoea!” And obviously, nobody wants that, right?

ADD THE ACTUAL SPANISH TEXT

HSBC Bank

Like many other companies facing translation issues regarding brand messages, HSBC has also been there. Their tagline stateside was “Assume Nothing,” which was completely fine. However, it didn’t work out in the overseas market.

The resulting translation in many countries was “Do Nothing,” which was definitely not the message the company wanted to convey to its customers. Due to this translation error, HSBC had to spend around $10 million to fix it and come up with a new tagline.

Like these, many more popular brands have committed the same mistake in some way or another while translating brand messages into the global markets.

However, almost all of them have learned the same lesson: ‘Conquering new markets is accomplished by following the right marketing tactics, and right marketing means translating the ideas, not just the words!’

Reading until this point, you might understand how important a brand message is for a company. On top of that, you would probably be wondering how crucial it is to translate your brand message in a way so that its real essence is not lost.

Well, both of your considerations are correct, and that’s why it becomes essential to know about some factors that can make or break your brand image in the global markets while translating the brand message. Besides this, you must ensure that you are using the right resources and considering professional translation services that communicate with your customers in their native language.

Therefore to ensure business success and avoid pitfalls contact Into23 today and get a quote now!

Do you want to sell your products internationally and let your website do all the talking with your multilingual customers? Professional multilingual translation services can help you. They allow you to avoid language barriers and expand your business overseas. 

Language barriers are falling, driven by technological evolution. International translation companies can help you take advantage of global opportunities. A study shows that the global translation services market size is projected to reach $46.22 Billion by 2028, growing at a CAGR of 2.07% from 2021 to 2028. Businesses are going global, seeking out opportunities across our increasingly connected world.  

Translation plays an important role in bridging the cross-cultural language gap, allowing you to reach your international customers in their native voices. Localising your content allows marketers to better connect with their target customers, providing them with relevant information about your products and services. 

Why Invest In Translation Services?

Companies invest considerable time and money in developing content that resonates with their target audience as this is indispensable for generating more leads and higher ROI. To further increase leads and improve ROI, companies need to consider delivering this content in the native language of all their target customers. It has been proven that people are 75% more likely to buy when the information they are given is in their native language. 

Investing in translation is an effective method of increasing your engagement with your non-English speaking prospects. Translating and localising your marketing content gives you an edge in global engagement over your competitors.

Here are some of the benefits of translation:

• You can penetrate a wider market
• It can boost your branding, customer trust, and revenue
• Improves SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) / SEM (Search Engine Marketing)
• It will drive significant traffic to your website

Seamless Communication with Accurate Human Translations

• Context and Culture

Translation allows you to connect with a diverse multilingual international audience seamlessly. You’ll find numerous AI-based translating tools online. However, in most cases, these tools cannot understand the context of the message, resulting in the wrong translation, especially when it comes to the nuance of culture. You may be familiar with some words that mean different things in other countries. For example, “pissed” means angry in the US, whereas it means “under the influence of alcohol” in the UK. 

If you are thinking of localising your marketing materials, you should consider finding the best translation services company that combines human and A.I. intelligence to deliver cost-effective and streamlined translation solutions. 

• Accuracy and Efficiency

Human intervention in translation ensures accurate communication while maintaining the essence of the original message. A linguist fluent in the source and native to the target language can best translate the context, tone, intention, and concept. This enables them to emotionally align your content, which improves the chance of translating prospects into loyal clients. 

Enhanced and Professional Translations

There are various challenges in multilingual translation, such as understanding hidden meanings and nuances in a document. The task becomes more challenging when translating legal documents because they need extensive research and knowledge of unique terminologies and jargon. This is something that A.I.machine translation tools are incapable of. You need to consult with the best international translation companies to ensure your content meets all the necessary professional translation standards.

At Into23, we offer industry-leading on-demand multilingual translation services. We have advanced language translation technology to deliver translations into over 100 languages. 

• Unmatched Quality

We have a network of proficient multilingual translators and voice-over artists. We provide dependable quality assurance and certification for medical and legal translation. At Into23, all translations are done by target-language native translators to ensure consistency, accuracy and quality. Our linguists can also provide cultural advice based on your target markets.

• Value-Driven Translation Services

Our clients rank us as the best translation services company because of our multicultural, customer-focused translations, helping them achieve greater ROI.

• Accuracy and Speed

Our dedicated teams of translators have a wealth of experience and deliver high-quality translations irrespective of the size and language of your project. We strive to deliver accurate results within your deadline. 

An Extensive Service Range

• Translation & Localisation

Translation refers to translating the content from the source language to the target language(s). Localisation refers to all the other activities involved in having content ready for a particular market. For example, this can include recreating graphics with text, generating the translated index for a document, ensuring the right fonts are used for a language, ensuring double-byte languages (e.g. Chinese, Japanese) or bidirectional languages (e.g. Arabic, Hebrew, Urdu) are displaying correctly, ensuring there is no truncation on the UI for translated languages. 

• E-learning Translation

With the surge of Covid-19, learning and working remotely became the new normal. According to a survey, the eLearning market is projected to be worth $325 Billion in 2025. As the world opens up, hybrid working is becoming the new normal. Companies are also contending with the Great Resignation. Employee experience management has become a critical business priority to help companies retain their workforce. E-learning platforms are great options to keep your employees engaged and provide personalised development and training needs. All global companies have a multilingual workforce. Providing this e-learning content to your employees in their native language is important for keeping your worldwide employees happy.

We offer end-to-end eLearning translation, from on-screen text translation to audio script translation and multilingual voice-over recording. We have specially designed filters for working with XLIFF files exported from Articulate Rise content and Articulate Storyline. 

• Marketing Translation

Marketing translation involves translating marketing material so it is culturally relevant to your target audience. The process of marketing translation requires properly adapting the language and style to the local culture, focusing on the accurate delivery of the message but being creative with how it is translated. Moreover, the translator should be a copyeditor who understands how products and services are successfully marketed in their target language.

Marketing content is the most high-impact content you produce. So, it is important to select the best translation services company for better outcomes. 

We have a team of creative translators who offer more than translations and ensure your content is relevant and localized. They are familiar with the marketing language essential for engaging the target audience and will produce a creative translation that will catch your customers’ attention. We offer:

• Marketing message and campaign translation
• Advertising transcreation
• Product description translation
• Website and other marketing collateral translation

Our agile and robust translation technology allows us to automate the project management, distribute it to our translators and return it to you quickly. 

• Legal Translations

Accuracy is the most important aspect of legal document translation. An accurate, clear reflection of the original legal document is crucial. However, the process of legal translation can be challenging because legal terms and systems differ greatly from country to country. The translated document must contain correct terminology. It must be a complete and accurate representation of the original, it should not contain any additions or deletions. Failing to do so can result in loss of money and clients. 

We offer a rapid turnaround and high-quality legal translation services. We have a team of translators who specialise in the legal field. Moreover, we follow strict NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) guidelines to secure your important data.

• Website Translation

Your website is your face to the world. It is the primary channel through which people learn about your business, your products and your services. Making your website available in all the languages of your target prospects will maximise your opportunity of winning new customers in those languages. Website translation involves adapting the web content to these languages and ensuring it conforms to cultural and social norms for these languages. It is also important to ensure your website is correctly adapted to offer currencies and shopping cart options that are relevant in different languages. This allows you to interact with your clients in their native language, which ultimately helps you engage them better.

Into23.com offers multilingual translation management solutions to ensure that your translated content remains in sync with the source language. Whether you are using WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Tridion, Adobe Experience Manager, or any other CMS (Content Management System), we are here to help you with your online content translation.  

• eCommerce Translation

Language can be a barrier to expanding your eCommerce business internationally, but it is also a doorway to new opportunities. Translating your product description, labels, and other marketing materials into different languages will help you boost your sales. A survey of over 3,000 global consumers shows that 75% of customers prefer to buy products displayed in their native language. 

Our multilingual translators will ensure the translation of your product descriptions is accurate and SEO-friendly so that you can rank high on the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). We also can translate your user reviews as this helps as social proof to allow you to drive more leads. For this user-generated content, we use a combination of machine translation and quick human editing to keep the cost down.

• Business Translation

Our business translation is a full end-to-end offering for all business content. This can be eCommerce, eLearning, legal documents, financial documents, HR documents, investor relations material, sales promotional material or any other content a business produces.  

We offer: 

• One centralised point for all translation needs in a business
• A customised portal where you can upload and request new translations
• For procurement, full visibility of all translations done across the business, including any discounts and other savings. 

We can remove the pain and complexity of translation across all your business functions. We will ensure that you speak with one voice across all languages. 

• Multilingual Voice-Over

Companies today use video and audio to communicate with clients, partners, audiences and employees. This can be through marketing videos, how-to or explainer videos or as part of their eLearning content. As with text, to give your users a great experience, these audio and video content should be available in their preferred language. 

We have a team of professional multilingual voice-over artists who work from their home recording studio This allows us to offer a flexible and affordable price suitable for 95% of most business audio and video needs For high-end advertising videos, we advise contacting professional advertising agencies who can provide TV-ready video. 

Our process starts with the original language script. We translate it into all the target languages. Once the translated script is ready, we will engage our foreign language voice-over talent to record the different language versions.

• Transcription Services

Our transcription services cover a wide variety of use cases. For legal companies, we transcribe audio files, most legal cases require transcription of any audio submitted as evidence. If this audio is in another language than the language of the court, we also offer a translation service for the transcribed audio. In other cases, a business may have some audio or video content that they want to translate or add subtitles to, the original script may no longer be available. We can transcribe this audio, with or without timestamps. 

For corporate events, we offer transcription services (often coupled with the translation of the transcribed script) for keynotes, these are usually then used to add subtitles (including multilingual subtitles). Our mission is to provide our clients with the best quality transcription services at affordable prices.

Have a project on your mind?

Speak to our experts now! Or, you can share your link or upload your file to get a quick quote.

NLG is a type of AI and language translation technology that is becoming more prominent in business platforms.

NLG standards for Natural Language Generation and it is changing the way we interact with machines and the way businesses gather data. What is NLG exactly, and what makes it different from other technologies? With the compound annual growth rate of the NLG market expected to reach 1.6 billion dollars by 2027, you need to know about NLG.

What is NLG?

NLG is a type of AI that automatically processes data into sentences and stories, in either written or narrative form, in a way that’s easy for us humans to understand. The NLG can take massive amounts of data from pre-set templates to form a sentence, reply, or inquiry that reads like a natural human conversation. This data and our inputted responses to this data create and add to a database of information that businesses and researchers can use to improve a process or product. 

When is NLG used?

NLG is being used for a vast array of applications, and chances are that you’re already encountering and engaging with this technology daily. Here are a few broad ways that both businesses and consumers use NLG,

• Chatbots or conversational AI assistants – Used on websites and business platforms to automatically answer customer inquiries. The advanced use of NLG carries a two-way conversation and responds to verbal commands. Examples are platforms Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant and Cortana. 
• Machine translation tools – Tools that translate one language to another, such as Google Translate.

• AI blog writers – Used for content creation. The NLG uses one language model and data set to write sentences and full-length articles. 

• Analytics – The NLG is created to detail insights from business data and reports, such as financial reports and spreadsheets and put it all into a format or narrative that’s easy to understand for businesses and their customers. 

• Automated leading emails and messages – This NLG creates predictive text for users when writing in emails and messaging platforms. 

• AI transcription tools – With speech recognition, the NLG takes audio and turns it into text.

• Semantic analysis – A platform used to determine what language best resonates and reaches a specific audience of which the NLG is used to create messages to which the customer is likely to respond.  

NLG has become one of the translation solutions used by global businesses as part of their website localization, eLearning translation and more. NLG is used as part of the machine translation post-editing process used by international translation companies and translation agencies online. 

How the Natural Language Process (NLP) works

 

NLP is a blanket term that refers to NLG and Natural Language Understanding (NLU). NLP is a framework that converts unstructured data to structured data. NLU is the ability of a machine to use syntactic and semantic analysis to gather meaning from a piece of text or speech. It is the NLG that allows devices to create content from the NLU data content. In short, NLU lets a computer understand what data the user is giving it. At the same time, NLG provides data back to the user from the computer in a way the user can understand, thus the Natural Language Process.

Making an NLG requires several steps and a substantial amount of NLU data to create content that resonates and sounds natural. Whether it’s a chatbot or a machine translation tool, these are some of the steps and considerations that go into making an NLG,

• Content analysis – This step analyses data to identify the main topics that should be included and what the result of the process is expected to be.  

• Data interpretation – As patterns are identified, they are put into context for machine learning.

• Document structure and sentence aggregation – A document is created along with a narrative structure with the interpreted data. From there, relevant sentences are isolated and combined to depict the topic accurately. 

• Grammar – Grammar rules, along with the syntactical structure of the source language, are added to ensure that the text sounds natural.

• Final output – The final output is presented in a template or format of the programmer’s selection. Such as a message from a chatbot, a piece of the translated text, an audio reply for personal assistant devices etc. 

The Future of NLG

NLG has created ways for businesses to communicate data efficiently and effectively, which increases productivity and reduces business costs. It presents data and information in an accessible manner while collecting big data that will lead to specific insights into a business. NLG has been used in different business industries, from insurance, retail, finance, media, eLearning platforms, eCommerce and eCommerce translation, manufacturing, translation management and more. 

While technology has come a long way, NLG is still limited compared to real human writing and semantics. NLG can only act on the NLU data, which, currently, doesn’t stack up to the ingenuity of human writing and content, which makes the quality of NLG content one of its biggest weak points. NLG, however, is not without its merit as the NLP is superb at generating human insights from big data, especially at a volume that we, as humans, are not capable of producing. As NLG can be used in various markets, it is a valuable tool that can be used in many ways for any business. Take translation and localization, for example.

For businesses that want translation and localization services to expand into other global markets, NLG is an important part of a quality translation. Translators use machines to help expedite the translation process and fine-tune it with their human expertise. This process is called machine translation post-editing.

Related: Machine, mind, or machine and mind: how to best deploy today’s machine translation solutions

Into23 provides translation management and translation solutions that cater to your business. Into23 can help you use an NLG in multiple languages for your business; whether it’s a customer support chatbot or transcription services for a voice assistant, Into23 can help your customers interact with your business better.

The Great Subtitle Debate

Phenomenal runaway South Korean hit Squid Game, streaming via Netflix, was in one regard panned: For many viewers, the subtitle translations obscured the original content’s meaning. Criticism centred on the subtitles not conveying the complexity and nuances of the brilliantly written script.

The errors are so bad, according to observers, that the English subtitled version and the Korea are completely different films in terms of not only dialogue, but meaning and character development.

For the uninitiated, Squid Game follows struggling South Koreans who do battle to escape the drudgery of their existence by winning a huge cash prize in a bloody series of games in which the penalty of losing is death.

(The script by director-writer Hwang Dong-hyuk had been rejected by movie companies on numerous occasions over the course of a decade, before it was made.)

One American Korean-speaking viewer, put their finger on the frustration this caused fans of the show. “Not to sound snobby, but I’m fluent in Korean and I watched Squid Game with English subtitles and if you don’t understand Korean, you didn’t really watch the same show,’ she tweeted. ‘Translation was so bad. The dialogue was written so well and zero of it was preserved,” she was reported by Elle as tweeting.

How bad was it, really?

Because of the changes of meaning in the subtitles, some of the characters came across as very different from that originally envisioned by the filmmaker, who is releasing three of his films the streaming platform.

The intensity of the situation contestants found themselves in was somewhat marred by the soft expletives they used whilst battling to the bitter end. In the original Korean, the language is far more gritty, as would befit such a hellish scenario.

Source

Lost in Subtitling Translations

One aspect of Korean that was wholly lost in translation was the use of honorifics. In many East Asian languages, honorifics are important parts of communication between people of different generations. They convey rich meaning about social relations, which was lost in the subtitles.

These honorific comprise words like verb forms and pronouns that reflect and recognise the speakers’ social hierarchical status. There are certain pronouns that a younger speaker would use to address an older speaker. ‘Older brother’ is commonly used by a younger make when referring to an older man. It indicates a degree of closeness and fondness, but this was lost in the translation.

Another instance is when Pakistani shop worker Ali meets company chief Sang Woo. At first, Ali addresses Sang Woo with the moniker, Mr Company President. As their relationship deepens in the face of extreme adversity, Sang Woo bids Ali call him, hung, or big brother, instead.

This affects the way a scene where Sang Woo betrays Ali, as the English translation was ‘call me Sang Woo,” which is not as poignant. The intimacy conveyed by the big brother moniker powerfully conveys the exploitation and selfishness of humans in general. Lastly, the lead film’s entire meaning was warped through the subtitle translations.

There are two English subtitles, one of which is closed captioning, has fewer errors. Closed captions display more than just what’s said, they convey other aspects of the visual display. It’s used for when the sound is unavailable or can’t be understood. The other version comprises a transcription of the dubbed version.

What is subtitling? (Subtitles, closed captions and dubbing)

To understand where it went wrong and how you can get it right first time, it’s necessary to understand the subtitling process and its limitations.

Subtitling falls between translation and interpretation and requires video transcription services with a specific set of skills, including the ability to condense dialogue into a set parameter – the on-screen closed caption space – whether the dialogue is intensely complex, or incredibly simple. Expert subtitles must be totally up-to-date with changes in vernacular language as much television content features everyday language, often spoken by young people, who are on the cutting edge of changes to language.

Just as a dubbing studio would have a dubbing artist, audio and video transcription services include highly honed subtitle experts. A good subtitle translator is hard to find, so do your due diligence. A good subtitling agency will be able provide premium subtitling services that are fit for an international hit. When consider a dubbing and subtitling services company, make sure to look at the reviews of existing customers, and assess the level of content they have produced before. Many companies will provide audio transcription services, voice dubbing and video translation services under one roof.

Subtitle challenges

Translating phrases in a way that takes the same amount of time to say the same thing in two languages is incredibly challenging. Copying actors’ mouth movements is important as it increases the feeling of authenticity and audience engagement. There is a fine balance between matching the actors’ mouth movements and staying true to the actual words.

The language pair being translated also has a bearing on subtitle challenges. For example, when translating from Korea to Japanese, as the latter language also uses a similar set of honorifics, then it’s easier to convey the precise meaning of the original.

But with a language pair like Arabic and Korean, the difference is going to be much greater. One reason for this is a language’s compactness. This refers to the number of words used to express a thought. Some languages have single words to explain a thought or action, for example, whereas others will use several words. Another way to put, is that a compact is a more efficient language.

Writing in The Atlantic, John McWhorter postulates that the least efficient language is Kabardian, which is spoken in the Caucasus. He notes that in the simple sentence “The men saw me,” the word for “saw” is sǝq’ayǝƛaaɣwǝaɣhaś (pronounced roughly “suck-a-LAGH-a-HESH”).

Why is it becoming more important?

Global audiences are becoming more comfortable with watching content in foreign languages with subtitles. Indeed, many of Netflix’s top hits are foreign language series like Borgen and Call My Agent. Foreign content is also becoming increasingly accessible. If you want to increase your content’s audience, then expert subtitling is the way to go. Contact us today to explore your options.

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