Posts Tagged ‘translation’
Humor Lost in Translation
Are you planning to start your next international business presentation with a little joke to break the ice? Well, you might want to reconsider or, at least, share a joke that will not fall flat in the other culture. The story is told of a businessman who gave a speech in a foreign country through an interpreter. Without warning the [...]
Harry Potter Translation Blunders
The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling has been translated into at least 69 languages. Some of those translations have included significant errors. The website CJVlang.com has documented numerous mistranslations in Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese. The BBC reported that one pirated Spanish translation of Harry Potter included not only [...]
New International Business Column
The new International Business column on DeseretNews.com is authored by Globalization Group vice president Adam Wooten. This weekly column is featured every Friday in the "Business" section. "The idea behind the column is that many lessons on international business, language, and culture can be learned through humorous anecdotes," explains [...]
P&G’s International Brand Check
"Proctor and Gamble likely understood the benefits of a single global brand nearly 70 years ago when it considered launching a new soap named "Dreck" in the United States. According to the book New Products Management by Charles Crawford, shortly before the company introduced the soap to U.S. consumers, it discovered "Dreck" sounded like German [...]
Do Not Translate This
Sometimes companies actually want to avoid translating certain words including product and brand names. When that is the case, be sure to add applicable rules and terms to your translation glossaries and translation style guides. Example product brand names - including Kodak and Dreft - that are successfully used untranslated across borders [...]
Execution Yard
Russian prisoners at Lincoln Prison in England received a pamphlet informing them about prison facilities, including an "execution yard." They were almost certainly relieved to learn that "execution yard" was actually an English-to-Russian mistranslation of "exercise yard." Nick Hardwick, Chief Inspector of Prisons, said, "This is an example [...]
Barf Detergent
Some popular mistranslation anecdotes are actually not translations at all. Some so-called translation bloopers are actually intended for only one language and market where no one would notice any problem. An example of this comes from Iran's Paxan Corp., which created a brand of detergent specifically for Farsi speakers in Iran. The product [...]
Some Brand Names Don’t Translate Well
Many global companies, like Coca-Cola, Nike, Google, Intel and Microsoft, choose to use the same brand name in multiple countries. This is not possible for every brand, but it can often be an advantage. Think of the degree to which a single brand name simplifies marketing and increases return on advertising investment. By comparison, how [...]
Avoid Copying and Pasting
Limiting the number of human touch points in a project will limit the possibilities of introducing human error. One way to limit the number of human touch points is to avoid copying and pasting text whenever possible. Sometimes it can not be avoided. However, one important way to limit copying and pasting is to work with and extract [...]
Hydraulic Rams
Unprofessional translators can really alter the meaning of a translation. Various reports indicate that a technical publication once translated the English words "hydraulic rams" into Russian as "wet sheep."
