Lost in, or gained from, translation (a trackback)

You know, this post's going to be for Asian audience. But hey, it's not as though a lot of people read my blog right?

First, read these:

• Lost in, or gained from, translation (1)
• Lost in, or gained from, translation (2)

Cliffnote:

Translation of movie and brand names in Asia sucks, because it adds meaning to what is otherwise just a name

Not that I particularly enjoy arguing, I just find this point of view fasinating. If you've RTFM [Wiki], he gave a couple of examples to support why general name translation from English to Chinese sucks. Let's take a look:

The Matrix (22nd century killer network / Hacker mission)
Now I can just imagine the marketing team pulling their hair on this one. How do you convey an idea of the Matrix, which is essentially a very modern surreal idea of life-inside-a-dream, meaning-of-existance with a name that is short and easy to remember? The Asia translation of the name involves the idea of Hacker / Network, which is fine. There certainly are hackers in the movies, and we definitely associate them with network in the beginning.

The original poster's (OP in short) problem with the translation was that it's not a direct translation. Matrix != hacker, and Matrix != network, therefore the name is bad. If you take a look at the goal of the translation, things are not so bad. The marketing team needs a name that is exciting, intriguing , easy to remember, and convey roughly what the movie's about. They translate to get you into the theatre, and they're successful to a certain extend. You look at the name and wanted to find out what it's about. The name gives you enough clue to get you in, without telling you too much to ruin your surprises.

Matrix was one hell of a name to turn.

Purpose of a name
The OP is right in that there's no meaning in a name, that it's just a calling convention, a name tag if you will. But in the business world, a name is not sustainable if you can't inject a certian degree of association. Users or consumers have to be able to quickly associate the name with some quality of the product placed on the table. For example, Apple = Simple-to-use High end computer, Dell = cheap commodity PC, HP = inject printer, Max Factor = high-end skin care, Pentium = fast CPU. Most of these associations are result of marketing action because you can't change the name. When you're bringing a product to another culture, it often helps to invent a name to subconciously relay that message.

Pentium's just another example of a well placed name for the asia market. The Chinese name conveys speed (with the word 'run'), and it's close enough to the original English name to avoid confusion. The Chinese name itself doesn't convey the word 'Five', Penta in Greek taken to form the brand name in the first place. Honestly, neither did the English name.

Direct translation are often awkard, especially when getting the exact meaning across isn't the main goal. You want to sell your products to another culture, and it just doesn't matter if Pentium doesn't really run, as long as the general public think "fast CPU" when using it.