Translations

Did you know ...?

2006-03-29T20:24:00.000-08:00

Did you know that …

… USA sells more to Latin America and the Caribbean than to the European Union?
… their trade within NAFTA is greater than that with the EU and Japan combined?
… they sell more to MERCOSUR than to China?
… Latin America and the Caribbean is the occidental fastest growing export market?

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Hispanic buying patterns

2006-03-29T20:22:00.000-08:00

Hispanics represent the largest racial/ethnic subculture in the U.S. About 50% are immigrants, and the majority are under the age of 25.

Marketing to Hispanics has proven to be a challenge because of the diversity of this subculture and because of the language barrier.

Sensitivity to the unique needs of Hispanics by firms has paid huge dividends

Source: Roger A. Kerin, Vijay Mahajan, and P. Rajan Varadarajan, Contemporary Perspectives on Strategic Market Planning (McGraw-Hill)

Mistakes muy grandes - Very big mistakes

2006-03-29T20:19:00.000-08:00

Efforts to communicate with Hispanic consumers has produced numerous bloopers in recent years. These examples further illustrate the challenge facing marketers:

A large U.S. airline ran an advertisement showing one passenger leaning over to another and apparently sharing a secret. The headline in Spanish was meant to say, "I fly sitting in leather." However, translated to idiomatic Spanish, it said, "I fly naked."

Coment: I understand this had been translated by a South American translator, who didn’t know that the word they use in Spanish for “leather” (“cuero”) means “naked” in Mexico and Central America.

A Spanish-language television ad for Jack-in-the-Box featured a flamenco dancer accompanied by three mariachi musicians.

What's the problem? Flamenco comes from Spain and mariachi from Mexico, and the music is utterly different.

According to a Hispanic marketing consultant, the ad was the "Anglo equivalent of Michael Jackson moon walking while Willy Nelson sang.

A Spanish-language comic book designed to promote safety for children was prepared by a California consumer safety group. Its title was "Nine Lives of the Cat."

In Hispanic lore, a cat has only seven lives.

A consumer products firm decided to call its burrito "Burrado." Hispanics found this name humorous, since "burrado" translates to "big ass" in Spanish.

Source: “A Little Latin Logic,” Brand Week (July 20, 1998), p. 12; “Marketing to Hispanics,” Advertising Age (August 24, 1998), pp. S1–S27; “Habla English?” American Demographics (April 2001), pp. 54–57.

Spanish words

2006-03-29T20:15:00.000-08:00

The list of words in Spanish that are very different for some Latin American countries is very long.

For your fun, I’m only going to add some few more from my own experience: (and forgive me to include some four letter words in English, but that would be the literal translation of the words from one Latin American country to another one):

When I arrived to Mexico for the first time, coming from Argentina to a multinational company, I decided it was better if we talked in English as I could hardly understand what they were talking about in “Spanish”!

For example, the word that is used in Mexico for the action of “dish washing” in South America would mean to “wash your ass”.

When I was first invited to breakfast, my female friend invited me a biscuit, but the words she used in Mexican Spanish were an invitation (for me as a South American) to have sex with her.

This was without saying that the accent to pronounce Spanish was so different from Argentina to Mexico that Mexican people wouldn’t understand what I was saying with Argentine accent (Argentineans talk too fast and they “swallow” some letters and words). Last year I was several months at Argentina with my little son and I would have to interpret his words to Argentineans and “translate” some Argentine Spanish for him.

After I got used to Mexican Spanish I had to travel to some other Latin American countries, to do some inspections on branches of the multinational company. I arrived to Colombia and after picking me up in my hotel at 7 AM, an employee asked me if I wanted to drink something prior to our arrival to the office. What he invited me would mean “wine” in some other Latin American countries. At that moment I realized that no wonder the branch in Colombia was doing so poorly, If they started to drink alcohol so early in the morning! But the guy was just inviting me some black coffee!

In the same country, “to wash your hands” would mean “to take a shower” in other Latin American countries.

Around that time I got married (my husband is Mexican) and he traveled shortly afterwards to Venezuela (in a business trip). There he was and was offered “a ride”, but the words used to do this offering were an invitation to have “anal sex”.