Study Finds American Brands Losing Customers And Dollars In Droves Due To Bad Translations

Press Release

People Who Speak English as a Second Language Spurn Products With Poorly Translated Ads… Losses Could Be in the Billions

July, 2003 - In a recent survey of people who speak English as a second language, 57% of respondents say they have seen advertising that is incorrectly translated from English. And astonishingly, nearly half (49%) of the respondents who are people who speak English as a second language say that if an ad is poorly translated, they tune out the message. All this continues to spell big trouble for global firms who are translating ads and sending the wrong message.

The national survey of 513 people conducted by TransPerfect Translations, the leading translation company in the U.S., indicates that 65% of the respondents believe that poorly translated ads show a lack of caring about the consumer.

Examples of poorly translated words or brands from the English in ads include:

  • "Point" translated into Spanish as "puta" which means prostitute
  • "Census" translated into Spanish as "sesos" which means "brain"
  • "Futball" for soccer-this is known as Spanglish (first half is Spanish, second half is English)-it should be fútbol

Certain products were consistently implicated in the poorly translated ads such as food products at 35%, 20% for drug products and a scary 13% for baby products. The respondents said that newspaper ads were the worst offenders at 35%, with 31% saying television ads were poorly translated. But probably the worst concern for corporations is that 32% of respondents said that a mistranslation of an ad would adversely affect their loyalty to a product.

Liz Elting, President and CEO of TransPerfect Translations says, "In order to succeed, translated ad copy must be crafted as if it were originally written in the target language, and the only way to achieve that goal is to employ native speakers from the target country-with an extensive professional background in translating (or transadapting as we often call it) ad copy and marketing materials."

Respondents of the survey also indicated that 30% found a translation so bad that it was humorous, while 36% misunderstood what the product was or was used for because the translation was so poor. And it is not just the message or a line in an ad-some brand names just don't translate into another language. For example, Chi Chi's (Restaurant) in Spanish means a woman's chest. Elting continues, "A thorough knowledge of the target culture, including the use of idiomatic expressions, allows the professional native speaker to communicate the meaning and the message as opposed to a literal rendering of the words." Elting sums up by saying, "Simply put, this is the only way for companies to effectively get their message across to their target audience to achieve the kind of results they want and need from their marketing dollars."

While some of the miscues are humorous, with the meteoric growth of the size and spending clout of minority groups in this country and the globalization of corporate brands, if not corrected the situation will not be a laughing matter for key American brands.

About TransPerfect
With revenue of over $250 million, TransPerfect is the largest privately held language services provider in the world. From offices in 66 cities on 5 continents, TransPerfect offers a full range of services in over 100 languages to multinationals worldwide. With a global network of over 4,000 linguists and subject-area specialists, TransPerfect is the largest translation company to be fully ISO 9001:2008 and EN 15038:2006 certified. TransPerfect is headquartered in New York and has regional headquarters in London and Hong Kong. For more information, please visit our website at www.transperfect.com.