International advertisements

[Ingrid Piller]

for one thing, Givenchy is not a French but a "global brand," and many
advertising agencies who have the accounts of "global brands" are
London-based (e.g. Publicis); also it's so much easier to find good
localizers who work from English than from any other language; third,
English is the international advertising language anyway - anything remotely
English (i.e. all kinds of pseudo-English) sells well in most major
markets/for most products because it conjures up a) USA and b)
globalization.

references:
1) cheshire & moser in _journal of multilingual and multicultural
development_ 1994
2) au in _babel_ 1999
3) greg myers, ad worlds, 1999
4) I've got an article on multilingual commercials in print, which I can
send you as an attachment if you are interested
5) if you read German: Platen, Oekonymie. 1997.

hope that helps. it's a fascinating topic. I'd like to learn more about your
work because I suppose that many of the positive associations that English
has in most parts of the world might not hold (and therefore not work in
ads) in many parts of the Arab world.

cheers, ingrid

> Dear colleagues,
> While collecting data (printed Arabic ads with their English
> vesrions) for my research which is about translating ads from english
> into Arabic, I found that, in many cases, the Arabic advert is
> translated from an international version (which is English) and not
> from the local language of the product. For example, when the
> manufacturer of the the famous perfume brand (Givenchy) starts
> promoting the product, they first design an international
> advertisement which is consequently translated into French, German,
> Arabic, etc. They don't first design a French advert, then they
> translate it into other languages. Do you have any comment about
> this? Please advise me with references if possible.
>
> thank you in advance.
>
>
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