Translating marketing texts from English may be challenging due to the number of compound words and phrasal verbs. Prepositions play an important role in word formation, and terms need to be analyzed in depth and within the specific contexts of marketing, business and trade in order to provide the right equivalents in Spanish. I have recently gathered some examples from a large translation project, and I would like to share some of them here.
Let’s begin with an easy one related to the field of Inventory: “overstock”. This word describes what happens when the merchandise such as consumer goods on the warehouse shelves far exceeds the demand. The term is part of the stock family, with “out of stock”, and “SKU”, that stands for Stock Keeping Unit. In Spanish, we can use exceso de stock and fuera de stock, and the acronym equivalent to SKU is UME, and in that case, instead of stock, we have existencias: unidad de mantenimiento de existencias. My next post could be Acronyms translation in Marketing, as I have gathered some examples too.
With the preposition “up”, and moving on to the Sales sphere, we can find two words that refer to an increase, rise, growth or expansion: “uplift” and “upselling”, though their collocation and use differ. As to “uplift”, it means “rise”; sales uplift or an uplift in sales are quite common. Now what does “upselling” mean? Let’s suppose services providers are launching an upselling plan. Their objective is to make customers buy more from them, i. e. to have them upgrade their plans. For example, customers who pay a monthly subscription fee for video streaming in one HD screen are offered to add a second device or screen at a higher subscription price.
I find it particularly interesting how the addition of prepositions makes all the difference in the area of Distribution. When companies need to get insights in relation to their turnover or sales figures, they need to determine their sales out and how many items they sell in, among other things. The difference between these two is rather logical: manufacturers sell to distributors (i.e. resellers) or retailers within their distribution channels, and then products are in turn sold to consumers at the outlets (puntos de venta), i. e. the shops. We need to unpack the first one in Spanish: “sell in” can be expressed as ventas en el canal de distribución. As to “sales out”, the equivalent is venta al público (the verb form is “to sell out”). Moreover, in English we find “sell-through”, or “Sell Thru”, that can be translated as tasa de venta directa, a percentage obtained by the formula units sold / units received x 100.
Lastly, let’s analyze “out of the box” in “OOBE”. The term refers to users’ or customers’ first experience with a new service or product. In the IT industry, experiencia inmediata is an equivalent that is usually found in relation to software. In comparison with “to think out of the box”, our term could be said to have a temporal rather than a «spatial» connotation. How does it relate to marketing? Celebrities endorsement of a new product is generally key for launches and campaigns. This is because celebrities together with social media early adopters (also called lighthouse customers) are usually the first to try or use new products and services, and by editorializing about their OOBE at their Instagram or YouTube accounts, for instance, they create massive awareness in large audiences in no time.
That’s all for this post. If you got to this point, you may be a professional translator in search for help, and I truly hope you found it! If you are just a curious person, like most translators, I hope you’ve found this interesting. And if you need marketing translations or translation advice, please drop me a line at contacto@wordkeys.com.ar.
Cecilia Palluzzi
Posted in Septembee 2019