Cultural awareness – and why it matters for your brand
Cultural awareness is crucial in communication across language boundaries to ensure that a message lands correctly with its intended audience.
In a time when brands are communicated across language boundaries every day, a translation needs to be more than mere words in a text. If tone, form of address and expression are not adapted for the target group, a strong message can become something entirely different – a risk that few companies can afford to take.
Imagine the following: You read a piece of information in Swedish where the tone is overly enthusiastic and something about it just feels off. You understand what the text is saying but it doesn’t instil confidence and the message is not getting through. This is precisely what happens when cultural nuances are not included in a translation – and it’s one of the main challenges that AI is still struggling with.
Cultural awareness in translation means that the translator – whether human or machine – not only replaces the words, but also understands how tone and how people are addressed need to be adapted to meet the social and cultural expectations of the recipient. This may sound abstract, but a few concrete examples will quickly illustrate what a big difference it can make.
Tone and how to address people – more than a matter of being polite
In Swedish and English it’s common to use the same personal pronouns “du” or “you” to address everyone. In many other languages, such as French, German and Dutch, there are informal and formal ways to address people that also affect the tone and word choice, and that are expected to be used in different contexts. When translating a Swedish or English text to one of these languages, choosing the right way to address people is particularly important.
And it’s not always a simple choice. In Dutch it’s fully acceptable to address a visitor on a fashion website for young people using the pronoun “jij”, while in a healthcare brochure aimed at older people this would feel completely wrong. How to address people correctly depends on the context and target group – and this is where human expertise and a feel for a language make a difference.
There are also languages where relationship, age and status are indicated through word choice and grammar; where not only the way to address people but also words and verb forms need to be adapted. In Hungarian, for example, a man addresses an older woman (or a child their teacher) in one way, two adults with no close connection in different way, and two friends in conversation in a yet another way. If we don’t choose the right way, it can come across as a bit comical or simply impolite. But this language tradition is disappearing – a change that translators need to stay on top of and pay attention to in their work. Language is a living, constantly evolving thing.
Culture-specific terms – what everyone knows here is not known to everyone there
Every country has its own traditions and household words, many of which are not known beyond its borders. Swedish phenomena such as fika, matlåda, Lucia and vabba are largely unknown outside Scandinavia. Depending on the context and target group, a good translation of these words requires either an explanation, creative rewriting or sometimes even a full cultural adaptation.
What does experience tell us?
Our experience gained over many years tells us that the best translations are achieved when the linguist translates into their native language, and also lives and works in the country and the culture where the text will be used. Language is constantly evolving, words take on new meaning, nuances change and new words emerge for new phenomena.
What we have learnt from recent internal testing of various AI tools is that the challenges described above are still difficult for AI tools to handle. Depending on the subject matter and language pair, some tools do a better job than others, but the end results always require quality assurance. That’s why a human translator always has the last word at Novoterm. If a translation doesn’t take cultural nuances into account, the target group may miss the message, which can weaken the brand a company has worked hard to build up.
Do you want to learn more about how we approach this in practice? Get in touch – we will fill you in.