For some time now, the buzzword in the translation industry has been localisation, most commonly in reference to website localisation. A website translator is expected to be not just a linguist but a cultural advisor who help his or her clients customise texts for varying cultural contexts, in order not to offend tastes and sensibilities in the target markets.

The prescription against alienating audiences by confronting them with “foreign” material is not new. In 1531, the humanist philosopher Juan Luis Vives cautioned: “Languages benefit greatly if skillful translators dare to give some foreign figure of speech or style to their nation, as long as it does not deviate too much from that nation’s customs and general way of life.” And John Denham decided that since he was translating Virgil for 17th century English readers, he ought to make him “speak not only as a man of this Nation, but as a man of this age”.

Today, website localisation and internationalisation (the process of standardising content for use across all languages and regions) have an important part to play in global commerce. Legal restrictions and regulations, including censorship laws, differ from country to country; address fields in online forms have to fit different formats for post codes, regions etc.

Received marketing wisdom has it that to sell globally, you have to think locally. Accordingly, advertising copy and website content are adjusted for appeal and relevance to varying consumer expectations. Translators have to track down culture-specific references, allusions or jokes which might be obscure to non-native audiences, and decide whether to alter or to replace them. Even images accompanying the text may need to be changed. This is often the case with website localisation, as we have discussed in previous blogs.

In German, pigs are associated with good luck. We say “Schwein gehabt!” to mean “What a lucky escape!”, and on January 1, people give each other little pink marzipan piggies to bring good luck for the new year. To you, this might sound merely strange, probably something to do with the Germans’ well-known appetite for pork in all its various guises, but in cultures where pigs are considered unclean animals, such an offering would be considered inappropriate and in extremely bad taste – something you might need to be aware of if you are translating promotional material for a German company.

Having said all this, I am more than a little troubled by the underlying assumption that in an age of increasing globalisation and respect for cultural diversity, people won’t tolerate anything which seems foreign to them. Is it really our job as translators to minimise other people’s exposure to the unfamiliar? When I started working fifteen years ago, I naively believed that it was the exact opposite – that I would be the one to bring foreign concepts and ideas to readers who couldn’t speak the language.

What are your thoughts on this? Should readers be shielded from foreign cultures? For more information and other blog posts on this issue, please visit our website localisation page.