Trade and Language

When we conduct foreign trade, the importance of understanding the language of a country cannot be underestimated. The successful marketer must achieve export communication which requires a thorough understating of the language as well as the ability to speak it. Those who deal with advertising should be concerned less with obvious differences between languages and more with the exact meanings expressed.

A dictionary translation is not the same as an idiomatic interpretation, and seldom will the dictionary translation meet the needs. A national producer of soft drinks had the company's brand name expressed in Chinese characters which were phonetically accurate. It was discovered later, however, that the translation's literal meaning was "female horse fattened with wax", hardly the image the company sought to describe. So carelessly translated advertising statements not only lose their intended meaning but can suggest something very different including something offensive or ridiculous. Many companies' advertising suffered in translation. For example, the intent of a major fountain pen company advertising in Latin America suffered in translation when their new ink was promoted to "help prevent unwanted pregnancies." So sometimes, what was translated was not an image the companies had in mind for their products.

Foreign marketers should never take it for granted that they are effectively communicating in another language. Until a marketer can master the language of a foreign country, the aid of a national within the foreign country should be enlisted; even then the problem of effective communications may still exist. One authority suggests a cultural translator, a person who translates not only among languages but also among different ways of thinking among different cultures, as a means of overcoming the problem.