Advertising translation
The way businesses are managed today is quite different than
those in the old days. Today due to the advancements in
technologies communication has become easier between any two
points of the world even though whatever distance there might be
between them.
Secondly the businesses today have higher
ambitions and goals but at the same time the competition is
increased. Hence as compared to the old days when industries use
to have aim of marketing products in domestic market today same
industries have started looking beyond domestic boundaries for
business. And now after the various initiatives of World Trade
Organization the globalization of businesses has come to scene.
This fact that businesses has been crossing
local boundaries to reach markets in various countries has made
it necessary for them to have advertising of their products or
services been done in local languages with the same meaning and
effect as it has in the source languages.
This is the point where advertising
translation has come into existence and has become one of the
necessary services required by corporate having multinational
presence.
Advertising translation mainly
involves translation of creative subjects like banners,
hoardings, television ads, Internet ads, desktop publishing,
magazines, newspaper ads,
Commercials, sponsorships etc.
The paramount responsibility of the
translator providing advertising translation is to maintain the
essence of provoking the viewer for buying the product or
services. As provoking a viewer is the main objective of
advertising a product or service. It is said by veterans from
the advertising field that advertising should be such that after
viewing say an advertisement of ice it should make an Eskimo buy
ice.
It means to say that the advertisement
should compel the viewer to buy the products or services with
out giving the viewer a chance to think much about it. This
effect should be consistent in an advertisement even after it
has been translated to some target language. In todays demanding
world the translators working in the field of advertising
translation are expected to deliver more than just translation
to target language but also localizing the advertisements
keeping in mind aspects like local cultures and traditions.
The advertising translation applications
like creating designs for banners, hoardings, pamphlets or any
such materials needs to address not only language translation
responsibility but also the color schemes that would reflect the
adaptability to the local culture.
This could be explain with an example like
in China the black color is considered as unlucky and moments of
celebrations should have red lining hence this should be very
clearly addressed by the translator working in the field of
advertising translation that the designer uses proper color
schemes while producing the designs for such media. In case of
television ads it needs to be understood that the cultures in
many countries are still having limitations as far as
expressions of feelings is concerned.
So the ads for promoting any products or
services should follow the limitations otherwise a mass unrest
in the people in that country would be instigated leading to a
permanent ban on the respective company. Thus translators doing
advertising translation have really important responsibility on
their shoulder of propagating the right message to the public
taking care of cultural and traditional limitations.
