What makes a good translation: the 5 essential aspects for foreign market success.

As a marketing manager of a company selling in foreign markets, you will have wondered at least once if the agency to which you entrust the translations of your leaflets, packaging, catalogues and sales materials is doing its best work.

That’s why we at We Translate Beauty, as the Translation Specialists in the Hair&Beauty sector, want to give you an overview of the 5 characteristics a good translation needs.

Let’s take a look at them together!

1. The translated text must use common expressions in the target language.
The text must not be a banal “literal translation” in which the reader (ie the client) does not find the expressions proper to his language

2. The translated text must be smooth.
That is, you must use the correct grammatical constructs in the target language (correct position of verbs, adjectives, nouns etc.). It seems trivial to emphasize, but as you will see in a moment it is not at all.

3. The translated text must be returned with the specific terminology of the Hair&Beauty Sector.
In our sector there are thousands of specific terms, which must be rendered correctly to give value to the text and avoid glaring meaning errors.

4.Translation should enhance the product and help to sell it.
Only thanks to the best lexical choices, those that enhance the product, your investment in producing effective texts in the source language will not go up in smoke when you switch to another language.

5. The reader (that is, the client) must not perceive that the source text was written in another language.
This is the characteristic that they all have: a text translated in an excellent way does not suggest at all that it is a translation.

When a translation does not meet these requirements…

I encounter mistranslations almost every day.
Today, in particular, I want to bring you 2 examples that show you how a text can lose value due to a mistranslation.

The first example refers to a product for eyebrows, so we are in the BEAUTY SECTOR.

The original text in English sounds like this:
“The amazing eyebrows immediately show your eyes,
Reveal your beauty and polish your overall look”

The translation agency makes it in Italian like this:
“Sopracciglia stupefacenti mostrano immediatamente i tuoi occhi,
rivelano la tua bellezza e lucidano il tuo aspetto generale.”

As you can see, the arrival text uses
a language clearly distant from Italian:
“Polish your appearance” is not an expression
that makes sense in our language despite
the verb “lucidare” in English means “to polish”.

Probably it would have been better to make “to polish”
with “shine”, in that polishing has the effect of
to make something shine and, in addition, “to make it shine”
is also an alternative, more correct translation,
of the word “to polish”.

In the first sentence, instead, the verb “show off”
was made with “show” (Amazing eyebrows show
immediately your eyes), but the verb “to show”
accompanied by the particle “off” becomes a phrasal verb
which acquires a meaning other than the simple “show”,
or “highlight”.

In conclusion it would have been a more correct translation,
Both linguistically and grammatically:

“Amazing eyebrows bring out
Immediately your eyes, reveal your beauty
and make your overall appearance shine.”

What do you think?
But let’s move on to the second example, which refers to a hair treatment.
We are, therefore, in the HAIR SECTOR.

The translation agency of the company that markets
This product translates the phrase:
“Treatment tailored to your hair”
with “Treatment customized for you hair”.

In English it is known that the adjective must precede the noun,
That’s why the correct translation would be:
“Customized treatment for your hair”

It seems a trivial error, a simple inversion
between two words, but in fact to the eyes of a native speaker
(i.e., customers who will be buying that product)
will sound like something highly annoying.

It’s like you, having to choose a hair mask,
read on the packaging “Tailor made treatment for your hair”:
is a banal inversion between two words, but it brings you
to ask you some questions about the reliability of a company
that presents itself by means of such unprofessional materials.

Well, with this article I wanted to give you an overview of the 5 main aspects that you need to evaluate in order to find out if your translation agency is doing its job well.

If you have any doubts, or simply need technical support to do this type of assessment, ask for our free Translation Specialists for the Hair&Beauty Sector.

You have 2 ways to do this:

Write to info@wetranslatebeauty.it and our secretary will contact you to make an appointment with me immediately.

Good marketing… well translated!

Katiucha Boncompagni
CEO We Translate Beauty
www.wetranslatebeauty.it