Translation is a minefield at the best of times but whereas telling your Spanish penpal you enjoy ‘long walks along the massacre’ can be a tad embarassing, it is nothing compared to the lasting damage to finances and reputation that a business mistranslation can incur. From awkward social faux-pas to accidentally sinking huge deals, even the smallest translation errors have cost businesses money, clients and respect on a massive scale. Below are some of the biggest and most common ‘oopsies’ in the translation industry:

Cultural Nuances

Cultural views are key. In many languages, even something as basic as sentence structure and types of words changes depending on who you’re talking to. This isn’t just politeness – it’s almost a whole new language.

This has caused havoc with many novice Japanese speakers who, upon hearing many names ending in ‘-san’, then add it to their own name – which is very taboo in Japanese culture. Referring to yourself as ‘Mike-san’ or ‘Lucy-san’ is effectively saying ‘I am incredibly important’ and we all know what we think of THAT guy in the office.

There are also literally dozens of honourifics other than -san which convey varying levels of respect. Even not using one is a bold statement, essentially saying that you and your conversational partner are such close friends that you’re beyond that. Within business, it is not uncommon for each individual level of management to have its own honorific (such as ‘bucho’, meaning ‘boss/head of a section’ ).

Using the wrong one is a very embarrassing and insulting mistake.

Understanding politeness and cultural norms is important with any culture, but especially so in East Asia. Always make sure your translator understands the people behind the language or you’ll end up looking like the ‘bucho’ of all idiots.

Direct Questions

Asking questions in a foreign language is always a tricky business, especially in advertising. The California Milk Processor Board should have had this in mind when they launched their ‘Got Milk?’ campaign in Spanish towards the Hispanic market – instead of asking them if they ‘Got Milk?’ it instead accused them of lactating, effectively alienating a $1.3 trillion market.

Let’s see them milk some profits out of that one.

Homophones and Homographs

Sometimes a single letter can make all the difference. Imagine the horror of discovering your hot date with Briar turned out to be a hot date with Brian. Likewise, there is a world of difference between ‘braking the car’ and ‘breaking the car’.

This was a tough lesson for Schwepps when they attempted a marketing campaign in Italy, with a mistranslation of ‘Schwepps Tonic Water’ appearing as ‘Schwepps Toilet Water’ on advertisements.

Delicious!

Literal Translation

This is pretty much the single biggest culprit for translation errors of all sizes. It is the number one golden rule for translators across the globe and the one most amateurs fall prey to – do not translate literally.

Imagine this – you’re about to go on stage for the performance of your life. Your father is with you backstage and he grabs you by the shoulder, leans in and says ‘Break a leg, kid!’. In English it’s an (admittedly odd) positive saying of support. Now, imagine you translated this literally into another language. Instead, your father leans in close and says ‘I hope you get injured, you tiny child!’.

Harsh!

Most commonly, these translation errors occur in direct translation for signage. It is not uncommon to see the sign ‘Do not touch yourself’ in small stores and stalls across China. This is not due to a sharp rise in perverts but is, in fact, a direct translation from the Chinese meaning ‘Please do not touch the items yourself’.

Online automatic translators are the single biggest culprits of this. Avoid at all costs! Pepsi famously learned this the hard way when they launched a massive ad campaign in China, with their literally translated tagline ‘Come alive with Pepsi’ coming out the other side as ‘Pepsi will bring your ancestors back to life’.

All of these translation errors are easy to make, but difficult to fix. The most important thing you can do is leave it to the professionals. As HSBC will tell you of their $10 million fix-up of a botched translation in an ad campaign – cheap translators are very, very expensive. Translate in haste, repent in leisure.

Get yourself a real translation agency. It’ll save you selling toilet water and hurling lactation-related accusations at your customer base. In the world of translation – quality is key.

Author Bio

Mike Parsons enjoys travelling and working with many different cultures. He currently works for Kwintessential.co.uk, a company that cover a wide range of translation services in the UK.

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This is a guest post by Alexander Zeller

Online translation tools commenced with the easily accessible Google Translate, which has now been out on the internet for 10 years, but it seems it hasn’t had that much of an impact on the demand for human translators. Most people believed that once translation tools were developed that would be an end to human translators. This doesn’t mean that machine translation is losing its momentum; it’s more the case that the two methods of translating now co-exist together.

However, the general trend in global business is for more and more businesses opening up their products to many more countries. Experience has indicated that it is of little use marketing a product to, for example, the Russian market unless at least some of the product information is written in Russian.

Terminology Banks

Some of the translation tools which are computer based help translators complete their translation tasks. A few of these are what are called ‘terminology management systems’ where useful terms are stored online in multiple languages so that the translator is only a click away when searching for the desired list of terms. These terminology banks allow translation divisions of an international organisation when allocating translation jobs to human translators that they can be assured that there is a standardisation of terms being used by a group of translators.

March of the Translation Apps

It is expected that throughout this year more apps will be released which will aid faster translations. There is a device that is currently being trialled and that is a translating earpiece. It allows people who don’t speak the same language to understand one another. This could theoretical reduce language barriers considerably.

A device developed and marketed by New York City company Waverly Labs is called ‘Pilot’ and is fitted into the ear. It has an in-built AP which is able to switch between languages. This language translation product is going to be introduced first of all in the main European languages: French, English, Spanish and Italian. The idea later is to load the device with other languages that are widespread, such as Arabic, Hindi, Slavic, Semitic and many African languages.

Pilot May Take Place of Google Translate

Apple fans love iPhone accessories so the Pilot is expected to be a winner as it has many smart language features. It works by using speech recognition so the person using one can hear and understand what another person is saying because the conversation gets translated into the user’s native language. Being what is called a wearable device it brings together this much loved feature with machine translation. It is quite possible that Apple fans will soon be deleting their Google Translate apps in favour of the Pilot iPhone app instead.

Apple is promoting the Pilot app well before the launch by giving away a free app every week. The actual launch date has yet to be decided. So far there has been unprecedented support for the product and crowd-funding is being sought to help in producing it and releasing it out on to the market.

Author Bio:

Alexander Zeller is a project manager and translator working with The Migration Translators in Australia, providing legal, medical, business, marketing, technical and website translation services in over 130 Languages.

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