Multilingual Branding05

Multilingual Branding

A lot of brands do not only cater to a specific market. These brands are international, meaning that their target customers are from different regions, countries, and cultures. This means that brands have to start focusing on making themselves multilingual. This means more than a direct translation, but an understanding of the cultures that they are advertising to. Sometimes the direct translation of your brand or product may mean something completely different in certain languages. For example, Chevy marketed their car, the Chevy Nova, to Spanish speaking countries. The embarrassing thing is that “no va” in Spanish translates to “no go “ or “does not work.” Another example is Coor’s slogan “Turn it Loose” which can be roughly translated to diarrhea in Spanish. Multilingual branding should result in similar responses to different cultures. Instead of hoping that the brand name or product will come across well internationally, try to adapt the branding in certain areas to appeal more to that area. Unfortunately, there is not much information about companies or brands that use multilingual branding but I guess they rely on their logo to get the recognition.

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How to Brand Across Languages

If multilingual branding is not your cup of tea, but you still want to market your brand internationally, I suggest you make the logo the most recognizable no matter the language. The text may not be in English but you can still recognize the brand just by looking at the colors and logo associated with the brand.

A way to market a brand across language and culture is to use transcreation rather than a direct translation of your brand. Transcreation refers to the process of adapting a message from one language to another while maintaining its intent, style, and tone. The fast-food restaurant Subway does this by keeping its arrow motifs, the same as the FedEx logo. The use of motifs in logos when designing the translated logo supports the process of transcreation.

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SpongeBob SquarePants

An example of a brand that I feel understands using transcreation and multilingual branding to spread itself internationally, is the cartoon SpongeBob SquarePants. SpongeBob SquarePants airs in many countries around the world and has 82 language variations of its title logo, even in languages like Korean and Hebrew who do not use Latin characters. I feel that this is a great representation of what brands should do when advertising to an international market. The motifs of the logos generally stay consistent with each other between languages. The water splash background with flowers, the sponge title typeface, the white bottom text with the dark blue background, and Nickelodeon’s logo in the top left. I bet that if I showed one of the other variations to a child (who is familiar with SpongeBob) they could figure out what it is. Typography is super important for brands to thrive. It represents the company’s identity while influencing the public perception of that company. Multilingual branding is something I feel brands should improve upon to properly and effectively reach their international audience. Translating your brand name may not always end in the results you want, focus on transcreation and making your brand recognizable across languages.

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