Watch Your Language
02/03/2011
Recently I had a discussion with one of my friends, who is German like me.
She spent a long weekend with me and had picked up a flyer for one of the West End musicals. They tried to make an effort and had published a leaflet with various different foreign language translations about the show, interval, refreshments etc. This was certainly very well meant – just that the German version was so full of mistakes that it was rather embarrassing to read.
Do businesses not care about proper translation, which is not only grammatically correct, but ideally also reflects the translator’s cultural knowledge?!
During the years I spent in the UK, I came to the conclusion that very few do. Very few would spend money on something they don’t value fully. Hence, I wouldn’t really invest a lot of effort into winning business in that area. My friend pointed out that it would be really easy to approach companies about their printed marketing material, point out one or two mistakes and make them an offer to correct everything properly. Somehow I think I would be sending a lot of offer letters and will refrain from this for the time being.
Of course, it is an area where clients will have difficulties checking the quality of the work and for most businesses that are mainly targeting tourists there will naturally not be any repeat business anyway – correct translation or not. But still – doesn’t it say a lot about those running the company?
