Translation lost, and found at Audio Arts Africa

Articles

Translation is a prolific enterprise in the advertising industry. Not surprising. We have thirteen official languages. But the practice is seldom given due consideration.

Much of what is delivered; and worse, much of what's expected, is as close to a literal translation as can be managed.

Translated TV and radio scripts are treated with a rubber-stamp mentality by an advertising bureaucracy often more concerned with ticking its boxes than delivering an accurate message.

This means the end clients don't get what they pay for.

“That's not what the original script says,” is a common gripe by an agency receiving a back-translation. Any deviation is seen as a bad thing. It's not. Without the deviation, chances are, the target market won't have a clue what's being said to them. That's the bad thing.

“The English language cannot capture the vernacular,” says Biki Molaoli, of Audio Arts Africa. (Script translation is one of the services offered by the production house.)

If we think in English we conceptualise in English. Maybe our idea is brilliant. So simple, so obvious we think everyone will get it.

Wrong.

Why?

The idea, even if it's not a string of words on a page, is still English. It's constructed in an idiom peculiar to English. In another language it might not make the slightest bit of sense, regardless of how simple it seems.

Take metaphor for instance. Advertisers love metaphor - describing a thing by likening it to something else. For some reason, a lot of what's seen as good advertising is constructed around metaphor. African languages are rich in metaphor too. But, as Biki points out, “Where English might have five words to describe a thing, Sesotho might only have one.”

In the case of translations, then, understanding might be better served by calling a spade a spade.

Similarly, a Sesotho, or a Zulu concept, which also seems obvious and simple, may be inexpressible in English. The devices we employ when writing, like metaphor, are very often ‘not transferrable.'

This requires the translator to be a creative. An inventor. An artist in his or her own right.

“We are not ‘translators' in the common sense of the word,” says Zach Haines, also of Audio Arts Africa. “We offer analysis of concept, a reworking of the script (at concept level, if necessary) taking culture, idiom and ontological differences into consideration.”

Biki and colleague Tholi Mthabela-Gumede, the company's language team, have decades of experience between them. Both love their (many) languages. They know their markets. They know what sells.

The result is a carefully conceived, carefully crafted piece of communication that may not look or sound the same as the original script, but which is true to its goal, and more likely to achieve that goal in the context of the language being used.

Language and concept go hand in hand. Translating one means translating the other.

At Audio Arts Africa, that's precisely what happens.

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