Localisation and fatal errors, beyond securing
authenticity in translation.
Will
accurate translation rise above securing understanding among politicians to
ensure professional localisation?
A Paris
born singer and actress, Vicki Benet, announced in 1961 that the best relief to
world tension was an accurate translation.
She gave the example of Krushchev’s speech in which the style of a
peasant was taken by the aristocratic minds of the then translators. The latter either softened the content or
entirely changed its meaning. The same
thing was done from the US side by a translator whose translation of Kennedy’s
speech was far from being authentic.
The tormenting
terror of those days led Vicki to fear the sudden eruption of a nuclear war over ‘semantics’.
Nowadays,
nobody would have the feeling that a low quality translation can lead to a war
of any kind. Only economic figures and
motives can create tension between nations. War is in fact becoming a more complicated and
risky endeavor for politicians and local economies. However, what a weak translation does can
harm an economy and result in real disasters rather than in mind nuclear fantasies.
In his
book entitled Understanding International Bank
Risk, Fight (2004) gave a very clear example of how
an inaccurate translation of a report about the financial situation
from English into Japanese made a fatal error by translating the word ‘rumour’ into the Japanese equivalent of ‘disclosure’. This did not only turn the news
from ‘possible’ to ‘certain’, but also on the bank’s financial situation. Most depositors
withdrew their money leading to an eminent bankruptcy, later on resolved by the
intervention of the Federal Reserves and other financial and insurance
bodies. This translation error cost the
US government around USD 8 billion!
The cost
of a poor translation goes beyond the harming of a financial institution. In times of doubt and crisis, this negative
effect is more than doubled, especially when the errors affect stock
markets. The doubt and uncertainty also
influence customers whose intuition leads them to discard translated texts s
sources of certainty. The European Commission found out that 82% of European customers
refuse to buy online if the website or product description is not in their
mother tongues. The Swedish, despite
their good understanding of English, do not rely on online selling English websites
and tend to buy products described in their own language.
In fact,
the importance of localisation lies in its ability to introduce the product within the
taste of the local market. It goes
beyond the mere translation. This also underlies
that the best, authentic and professional translation output is not only error
free, but also local in terms, style, and even taste.
Almiaad Lingua has made a huge effort in the last
decade to give its localisation services a new horizon by incorporating a
marketing team which understands how words sound local. Our English into French and English into
Arabic teams have reached excellent results in this regard. We now employ
localisation groups in Dubai and the Middle East (www.almiaad.ae) and the UK (www.almiaad.co.uk) to take care of document
and corporate profile translations.
Almiaad Lingua for Translation and Language Services,
Ltd
+216 52198284
