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Most of us practicing and experienced professional translators are well aware of the complexity and delicacy of the language translation process. We know how inexperience or machine translations can change the meaning of a piece of content making it ineffective or worse detrimental to the intended purpose. This is something that translation buyers should always beware of, for they are the ones who would be hurt from botched up translations. The following translation howlers would make my point clearer –
- When Pepsi was marketed in Taiwan with the slogan “”Come alive with the Pepsi Generation” a translation error in Taiwanese led it to be read as “Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead”
- “You are invited to take advantage of the chambermaid” - this was found written in English in a Japanese hotel room. Obviously the work of a word to word translator.
- Electrolux, the Scandinavian manufacturer of vacuum cleaners, marketed its products in America with the slogan “Nothing sucks like an Electrolux”.
- Our wines leave you nothing to hope for – found on a Swiss menu.
- “Schweppes Tonic Water” translated for its Italian marketing campaign to “Schweppes Toilet Water”
There are hundreds of such examples and recounting all of them would probably fill up an entire book and what’s more, countless more translations gaffes are taking shape right now all over the world. In order to avoid such embarrassments translation services buyers need to realize that translation is a complex job and cannot be done by a machine, or by inexperienced translators who are just familiar with a language pair.
Language translations, especially those which are important, like business or academic documents, should be translated by professional translation experts who are satisfactorily experienced and specialized in the required language pairs. If you go for the cheapest rates or get your work done for free then you can expect results which can be categorized along with the above examples. You can however use free services or machine translations for documents which are not very important.
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