linguistic oddity

[cellio]

I was surprised to see the following logo today:



I had assumed that, in general, when translating a business name with semantic content from one language to another, you would actually translate into the target language, rather than transliterating the phonemes in the source rendering.

I mean, it's one thing if your name is, say, "McDonald's"; that's just a person's name without an obvious corresponding word, so you'd just transliterate it. But "Burger King" has semantics that are lost in (this) translation, which makes me wonder why they did that when they didn't have to.

Comments

[geekosaur]

Because it's known by the sound of its name, not by the name's semantics.

[cellio]

In Israel?

[geekosaur]

Anywhere, pretty much; when I had TV and watched fútbol on Hispanic stations, *no* U.S. company translated its name into Spanish, but used its English name instead.

My understanding is that their servicemark is "Burger King", not the local translation of it (whether literal or idiomatic), so they need to transliterate instead of translating.

[cellio]

Ah, ok. That makes sense, I guess.

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

Have you seen the shirts that do the same thing with "Grateful Dead" anywhere?

ladymondegreen has one, and I know I've seen them on other people.

[cellio]

No, I haven't. That would be pretty funny.

Thus far most cases of this sort of thing that I've seen have been either ones where there's no translation (place names, for example) or ones where only part of a phrase translates (e.g. "New York" -- sure, you can translate "new", but then you're stuck).

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

A local store here sells caps that, in Hebrew, read "Mets" and "Yankees"

[kayre]

My Hebrew is both minimal and rusty.. what, if anything does that translate to?

[cellio]

My guess would be nothing, but I'm not sure. I'll try to remember to check the dictionary at home (unless someone else speaks up first). As is, it's just a phonetic spelling of "Burger King".

[dr4b]

They do it in Japanese too, if that helps... always transliterating, never translating.

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

Ack! I was going to say that!

The Japanese are also the ones that name even native products in English and thn use the transliterations as the trade names...

Translations versus Transliterations

[lefkowitzga.livejournal.com]

Part of the issue may be that translations mean something that could be taken badly. There's a famous story about a commercial for some cola that it 'brings you back to life' which in whatever Asian language the ad was translated to meant that the drink was animating corpses.

Could you really see an accurate translation used for the name of most products? "Happily Endebted Corpse" or "Monarch of Ground Meat Patties" don't exactly scan from a marketing point of view... :)

Re: Translations versus Transliterations

[cellio]

Yes, you have to be careful with translations. But you also have to be careful with transliterations. I once heard that the maker of the Nova (car) didn't think about this when marketing in Spanish-speaking countries; "no va" means "doesn't go". And I've heard that one possible rendering of "Coca-Cola" into some dialect of Chinese was rather unfortunate, though I don't recall the specifics. (I think it involved either bad tastes or risque concepts.)

Re: Translations versus Transliterations

[songwind.livejournal.com]

I believe it was something like "bite the wax tadpole"

Re: Translations versus Transliterations

[cellio]

Yes! Thank you; it was driving me crazy. I was stuck on the idea that it had something to do with frogs but I just couldn't remember the rest. (I completely forgot that the frog involved was inorganic.)

"Bite the Wax Tadpole"

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

The story about "bite the wax tadpole" is an urban legend (http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/tadpole.asp), as is the one about the Chevy Nova. Too bad, perhaps.

Re: "Bite the Wax Tadpole"

[cellio]

That's a pity. They're good stories. :-)

Thanks for the link. I'd heard both of these stories long before I ever heard of Snopes, and didn't think to go check later.

Re: "Bite the Wax Tadpole"

[figmo.livejournal.com]

Beggin your pardon, but "no va" really does mean "no go" in Spanish.

Re: "Bite the Wax Tadpole"

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

Yes, but the way it was explained to me, no one in Mexico would think that a car named "nova" would not go the same way that no one here thinks that a dining-room set called "notable" contains no table. The pronunciation and stress are different when they're spoken, and most people don't naturally mentally muck with words like that when they're in writing.

Re: "Bite the Wax Tadpole"

[cellio]

That part I know; I was assuming he meant that the marketing failure was an urban legend.

An Israeli variation in that....

[shmuelisms.livejournal.com]

In Israel the Korean car maker KIA (pronounced Ki-a), while using the same name spelling, logos and all, has the name pronounced as KAYA. This being due to Kee meaning vomit in Hebrew <== not something you want associated with your product, is it? This too, may be an urban legend, but I checked the pronunciation in the KIA FAQ (http://www.kia.com/faq.shtml#mean), and facts seem to line-up.

[International] Brand Names in Hebrew are almost always transliterations, after all, from a marketing point of view, you want to keep the Brand Name recognition.

You don't know me. I was just passing through.

Re: An Israeli variation in that....

[cellio]

Ooh, yes. "Our car prompts motion sickness" isn't exactly the message they'd want to send. :-)

You don't know me. I was just passing through.

Hi. Welcome.

[sdelmonte]

I don't know if there is a Hebrew word for hamburger. There technically isn't an English one, after all. So why bother translating at all?

[tangerinpenguin.livejournal.com]

At the risk of inspiring Pulp Fiction quotes, it's interesting to watch how things like "Quarter Pounder" (the McDonalds hamburger) get translated in the vast majority of the world that uses metric measures.

Per the quote I alluded to, it's supposedly a "Royale" in France. In Brazil, IIRC, it was a "Quartero", which plays on the "quarter" sound but doesn't actually say one quarter of what.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

It's 'Royale' in Germany as well (but it's a quarter-pounder with cheese, they don't seem to do it without cheese). Note that the back-derivation 'burger' for an patty of unnamed meat (named meat costs more) is incorrect, as are the derivations from that like 'beefburger', since the hamburger was named after the place Hamburg (but apparently one in America, not the German one). Not that this stops Burger King (or as an SCA article had it, Borgia King)...

[figmo.livejournal.com]

Back east I saw lots of folks with Hebrew "Coca Cola" t-shirts. It's transliterated, too.