Still More about Translating Ads

November 16, 2013

Still More about Translating Ads

I’m posting again about translating ads. It is an interesting subject because, frequently, I have had to debate with a client the wrong idea that translators must become ad writers when asked to translate this sort of text.
These are two different professions, with different contents and different price lists.
The key to this problem is the fact that advertising any product or service should be written independently for any particular public (target) in its own language.
On the other hand, it is very difficult for an ad writer, for example, to work in Spanish for a Spanish-speaking public and, at the same time, keep in mind that this text is going to be translated, and make the work of the translator easier when writing their texts.
That is the origin of that feeling of dissatisfaction we all feel when we face translated ads.
Some other times, translators are expected to solve the lack of ad writers in other languages. [1]

Cf. also “Translating Ads,” April 30 2011 and “More about Translating Ads,” May 12 2012.

[Image: Experts Inspecting the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum, engraving published by the Illustrated London News, September 12, 1874, about the 2nd International Congress of Orientalists, which took place that year in the British capital.]

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