The increase in the number of businesses attempting to break regional barriers to access new markets has resulted in a surge in demand for translation and localization services. This has also resulted in a sort of domino effect for innovations in machine translation especially in the area of neural machine translations. But, clients in a bid to appeal to sentiments of their target audience now require LSPs to incorporate emotional translation in the form of localization and transcreation which can’t be done using machine translation but rather, requiring human input. This article covers translating emotions and the role human inputs play in conveying emotional translation.
What is emotion translation?
Translating emotions refers to the communication of neurological triggers into a readable and/or understandable format. In as much as emotion is transferred via language, its effect is either dulled or exaggerated by words. The translation of emotions rallies around finding accurate means of portraying emotions felt in words and language. The constant evolution of human languages with trend makes it difficult for an emotion to possess a singular translation acceptable by all (do you want to learn more about it? Check out this awesome article.).
Important factors that makeup good emotional translation
Attention to detail: Emotions at times can be difficult to convey. That being said, LSPs should go beyond the obvious to reveal all obscure details. An easy way of achieving this is to use the plethora of information at disposal to accurately express sentiments behind each client needs.
Minimal approach: Language service providers should in the course of paying attention to detail strive to keep all translations minimal and simple. The underlying message being passed should not get lost in translation as a result of complexities that occur from attempting to push the entire narrative.
Expertise in language: It is virtually impossible to accurately translate the expected emotion of a particular subject if the LSP does not have a good grasp of all the languages involved. By having a proficient understanding of the required languages, LSPs can properly establish clear lines of communication for their clients’ needs to be able to deliver on what is required. A great example is the ability to identify sarcasm.
Understanding the client’s need: It is one thing to be an expert in the languages that require translation but another thing to clearly understand the need of a client. Which is why LSPs must take the right steps to ensure that there is absolute comprehension of what needs to be translated, how it needs to translated and to whom the target audience are.
Creativity: This is a yet another crucial factor LSPs must consider when translating content laden with emotion. Depending on what on kind of type of translation is required, a certain level of creativity becomes crucial to what needs to be done. Which is why transcreation and content localization requires creativity to be able to combine most of these factors to ensure that the right message is passed across for the client.
Check out this link for some “untranslatable” emotions in other languages:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170126-the-untranslatable-emotions-you-never-knew-you-had
Emotion translation and the future of human input
Machine translation has come to stay irrespective of what critics might say, the numbers are there to back it as it is estimated to be a $1 billion sector by 2022, this isn’t without stating its capabilities in improving productivity, speeding up workflow and cost savings for businesses. But this is not to say that things are all good with MT, some may argue its inefficiencies in translating grammatically complex languages and as such requiring human input (translation) to check and edit errors. Also, when it comes to translations involving emotional elements, machine translation performs poorly due to factors like complexities in context, situations, nuances and cultural background. This, of course, is where human translation thrives. By providing the necessary information that matches the above criteria in terms of factors results in seamless translation and error-free end products
Different languages and cultural groups also carve up the colour spectrum differently. Some languages like Dani, spoken in Papua New Guinea, and Bassa, spoken in Liberia and Sierra Leone, only have two terms, dark and light. Dark roughly translates as cool in those languages, and light as warm.
At TranslationsinLondon, we are poised to give you the best translation solution for your business. Our diverse and experienced team of translators work diligently to pass across your desired sentiment and emotions without any distortions or loss of meaning in an easy to comprehend way to desired audience.