Study Finds American Brands Losing Customers And Dollars In Droves Due To Bad Translations
People Who Speak English as a Second Language Spurn Products With Poorly Translated Ads… Losses Could Be in the Billions
July, 2003 - In a recent survey of people who speak English as a second language, 57% of respondents say they have seen advertising that is incorrectly translated from English. And astonishingly, nearly half (49%) of the respondents who are people who speak English as a second language say that if an ad is poorly translated, they tune out the message. All this continues to spell big trouble for global firms who are translating ads and sending the wrong message.
The national survey of 513 people conducted by TransPerfect Translations, the leading translation company in the U.S., indicates that 65% of the respondents believe that poorly translated ads show a lack of caring about the consumer.
Examples of poorly translated words or brands from the English in ads include:
- "Point" translated into Spanish as "puta" which means prostitute
- "Census" translated into Spanish as "sesos" which means "brain"
- "Futball" for soccer-this is known as Spanglish (first half is Spanish, second half is English)-it should be fútbol
Certain products were consistently implicated in the poorly translated ads such as food products at 35%, 20% for drug products and a scary 13% for baby products. The respondents said that newspaper ads were the worst offenders at 35%, with 31% saying television ads were poorly translated. But probably the worst concern for corporations is that 32% of respondents said that a mistranslation of an ad would adversely affect their loyalty to a product.
Liz Elting, President and CEO of TransPerfect Translations says, "In order to succeed, translated ad copy must be crafted as if it were originally written in the target language, and the only way to achieve that goal is to employ native speakers from the target country-with an extensive professional background in translating (or transadapting as we often call it) ad copy and marketing materials."
Respondents of the survey also indicated that 30% found a translation so bad that it was humorous, while 36% misunderstood what the product was or was used for because the translation was so poor. And it is not just the message or a line in an ad-some brand names just don't translate into another language. For example, Chi Chi's (Restaurant) in Spanish means a woman's chest. Elting continues, "A thorough knowledge of the target culture, including the use of idiomatic expressions, allows the professional native speaker to communicate the meaning and the message as opposed to a literal rendering of the words." Elting sums up by saying, "Simply put, this is the only way for companies to effectively get their message across to their target audience to achieve the kind of results they want and need from their marketing dollars."
While some of the miscues are humorous, with the meteoric growth of the size and spending clout of minority groups in this country and the globalization of corporate brands, if not corrected the situation will not be a laughing matter for key American brands.
About TransPerfect
TransPerfect Translations is one of the world's leading translation companies. With 19 offices on 3 continents, it provides a full range of language services in over 100 languages to multinational companies worldwide. TransPerfect Translations has a network of 4,000 linguists and subject-area specialists worldwide. The wide range of services it provides includes translation, interpreting, multilingual typesetting/graphic services, web site globalization, software localization, multimedia presentations, subtitling and voiceovers as well as multicultural marketing. Headquartered in New York City, TransPerfect is the world's largest provider of legal translation services.
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