Thursday 21 June 2018

Role of Translation in Marketing and Branding

Communication is the soul of Marketing and the life of Branding because understanding the customers is Marketing and helping them to understand the product/service offered is Branding. Effective listening and effective speaking are the basics of every Marketing/Branding communication, so, the marketer should be well-versed with the language of its target audiences, and the content/messages for them should be very clear, unambiguous, relevant, and easy to comprehend. But, in the age of globalization having command on all the languages of a diversified audience is really a big challenge because every language has unique words, unique sounds, and unique grammar rules. There is no concept of standardization in the linguistic science; every rule makes a specific sense.

No two words have the same meaning. A mere understanding of synonyms can’t make an accurate translation; one should also be familiar with semantic changes as well as the etymological differences. Let’s take an example; in common parlance, the word localization is the synonym of translation, and both serve the same purpose, but in real terms, they don’t have just different meanings, but functions too. While translation is the process of document translation from one language into another, localization is translating a text/message but as per the local dialect. The simplest example to understand the difference between translation and localization is that French to English translation will have a slight difference in British English and American English. And, this difference matters a lot to businesses and brands. For Americans, Pants are like trousers, but for British people, they are the underpants. Hence, in marketing and branding, the focus should be on localization because culture plays a significant role in Marketing, and it is one of the major influencers in buying behaviour and purchase decision.
Creativity is the appealing power of a brand, and it shouldn’t be lost while changing the attires – i.e., translating the marketing message from one language into another. The beauty shouldn’t lose its charm whatever be the translated language. The feeling, emotions, and sentiments of a message should be same in both source-language and translation language. Here, the focus should be given to the essence of a marketing message rather than its literary meaning.  A single two-letter word ‘GO’ can be used to ignore the people as well as to motivate the people. It depends, how you want to use it and how you use it. Truly, language translation is neither conversion nor recreation; it’s reexplanation of a message in the non-source language.

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