‘Hispanically’ speaking: translation and persuasion for Spanish-speaking America
The first guest post in Lingo24’s brand new International Marketing blog is from Juan Tornoe, who is Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and Partner at Cultural Strategies, a US-based marketing & advertising consultancy.
When marketing to a culturally & ethnically diverse audience in the United States, you really need to put your money where your mouth is if you want to secure a specific segment of the community as loyal, long-term customers.
Whilst working with one of our agency clients we encountered a particularly tricky situation; one which will help to demonstrate exactly what I’m talking about.
This specific client (who shall remain nameless) is the second largest player in its category in the US and some of its largest and most important markets are heavily populated by Spanish-speakers from diverse background and with varied levels of assimilation/acculturation.
Therefore, there was a genuine need to reach out to Hispanics bilingually, in every piece of communication that was targeted at them.
The client developed a big promotion to increase the size of its database by having people opt-in to a giveaway, both at their brick and mortar locations as well as online.
People needed to be persuaded, through the power or words (and images), to participate and be in with a chance of winning some pretty cool prizes. The English piece was masterfully constructed. But before we could say ‘Schenectady’, the client proudly produced the text translated into Spanish. After a thorough review, we were faced with the task of telling them that the Spanish language version would be ineffective at the very least, if not totally counterproductive.
You see, it wasn’t that the translator was bad at their job. They simply didn’t understand the client’s industry and, more importantly, they had no clue on how to translate persuasive concepts/ideas – ‘transcreate’ – from one language to another.
The result was a bland and sometimes nonsensical litany. The only part of the translation they did not skip a beat on was the legalese, the one section that almost no one reads (and if someone was going to read it, it would be after already being persuaded to participate).
This is what separates the men from the boys. Translating a legal document definitely requires a certain skill-set. Communicating concepts in a different language, while maintaining the ‘spirit’ of the message, keeping its true meaning and persuasiveness, even if it means completely re-writing it and not leaving a single word of the original language’s version – that, my friend, is an art.
Thankfully the client followed our advice, redid the translations and a major blunder was prevented. But not before an additional stack of cash was spent to fix a perfectly preventable situation…if only they had considered the right people for the job in the first place.
Bottom line: being frugal in situations similar to the one mentioned above, sooner or later, will end up backfiring. Don’t let it happen to you.
About Cultural Strategies:
Cultural Strategies is a marketing & advertising consulting firm partnering with ad agencies, communications firms, and businesses to develop strategies that resonate with a Multicultural America.