Wine is one of my favorite fields to translate in. Descriptions of wine often pull out all the stops in their use of language, waxing lyrical and employing synesthesia (the transfer of sensations from one sensory area to another, such as describing a taste with a texture) to attempt to capture in words the ineffable…
Last month, I had the opportunity to speak to a French translation class at Duke University about the translation profession. I’ve previously blogged about starting a translation career, French fashion translation, and avoiding literalism (here and here). For this presentation, based on student interest, I focused on the fields of advertising and marketing, drawing examples…
Keds is a classic brand known worldwide. It’s been around for exactly one hundred years, having been founded in 1916, and its original shoe design was the first mass-marketed canvas-top sneaker (see photo above). But their slogans in French could use a little work. Keds shoe boxes have these English-language phrases with corresponding French translations: Take on the…
The Sochi Olympics begin today, with the official slogan “Hot. Cool. Yours.” Really? It sounds like those old ads for the McDLT. What were they thinking? According to the Sochi 2014 website, the word “Hot” represents “the intensity of sporting battle and the passion of the spectators, and it emphasizes the location of the Games, the…