Make it wrong to make it unique
Special Olympic edition
From the bottom of my heart mind
Fresh stories from a Spanish Copywriter.
The Olympic Games are always a fun thing to watch. Every 4 years you discover new sports and spend hours watching something you didn’t know existed.
Fun fact: I started my professional career as a sport journalist and my first internship was to cover the 2012 Olympic Games in London for a local Spanish newspaper. I was the one staying until late at night updating the medals for each country, besides writing about basketball, beach volley, mountain bike and many other sports.
When you study, watch or read sports you realised about one thing: a lot of words and expressions are made up. You can’t find them in any dictionary, sometimes not even on Google, since they can be born any minute.
And you know what? That’s amazing! Maybe is not correct in grammar or academic way… but who cares? I don’t. The sports don’t. And sometimes those words go beyond the sports and can be used on a regular basis.
The localization of these are tricky, I’m not gonna lie. Sometimes is impossible, and that’s where a good copywriter is needed. I’ll give you some examples:
Nicknames. We have Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. You can keep “The Rock” or translating in your language. For example, in Spain is usually translated, since the Spanish word (“La Roca”) is very similar.
Names. With the NBA, in Spain we usually respect it (since is the official name), but we read it in Spanish (Ene Be A).
Expressions. Continuing with the NBA, a famous sportscaster in the U.S. uses “BANG!” for great plays. In Spanish we don’t use it (and without the proper context, it wouldn’t make sense). For this one, you can use “¡CHOF!”, a expression that the main NBA sportscaster in Spain uses.
There are a lot of expressions and situations and my answer to the question “should I translate or not” is always the same: it depends.
You’ll need to check consistency over past transcreations, know the game and how people refer to it, think about the more natural way and then act.
A good training could be to keep watching the Olympic games. So you are “working” while watching, not a bad plan.
Outside the desk
Where the magic really happens.
🥵 To be in Valencia in July/August is hard. Hard and hot, very hot. Reaching 35 degrees today and difficult to sleep at night.
🏅 A lot of my time is going into the Olympics. Nadalcaraz, “La Familia”, swiming and any sport on the screen.
🎉 Summer is also time for little town festivities. The one on Saturday, on Nueva de Llanes, will remain in the books for quite some time.
Make it global, baby
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All the best for the rest of your week,
💙 Ricky from Textonality.com 💙