Translating slogans: Advertising campaigns across languages

Abstract

As market became global, migrating products were accompanied by migrating advertising campaigns, which created new challenges for translators worldwide. A substantial number of trends and problems in the translation of advertising language have already been dealt with extensively. This paper offers an observation of the global advertising campaigns entering the small markets of the Czech and Slovak Republics since the markets opened to western products 20 years ago and it maps the major stages of the development of advertising slogan translation of that period. The first stage of using untranslated slogans for the local market was followed by a stage of rather poor translations, which now again seems to have been replaced by a wave of untranslated advertising texts. This paper tries to find reasons behind this development, pinpointing the specific problems during each stage. It charts the development as it was experienced by small-market translators and consumers and offers examples and case studies that help clarify the motives of the advertisers for their choice of translating strategy. Finally, it evaluates the choices and suggests the continued use or abandonment of some strategies.