Adapting Guidère, M. (2003)

Abstract

Translation and localization are intertwined concepts that can only be fully appreciated across both the textual and visual fields simultaneously. This is especially true in advertising, where products and their accompanying visual and textual representations are routinely translated and localized across languages and cultures. This paper explicitly presents the need for translators to possess the capacity for both textual and visual translation, a need that must be reflected in translation curricula in formal education. In this paper, Guidere’s (2003) methods for textual and graphical, or visual, translation is presented in the context of product localization. These methods are adapted for this paper to include adaptations made for overall coherence, or the ways in which the textual and graphical translations ‘speak’ to one another. We then employ these methods in the context of advertisements from Nikon (an example of textual translation with little graphical localization across cultures), FIFA Weekly (an example of a culturally specific graphical translation and localization method), and McDonald’s (an example of a sophisticated graphical translation and localization method across cultures). It is through these advertisements that we present the usefulness of this adapted method and the need for graphical and textual translators. Further, we suggest the need for an expanded and highly interdisciplinary translation studies curriculum, one that provides capacity for localized understanding, and the presentation of visual, textual, and other semiotic resources towards an effective conveyance of meaning.