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Translating Eastern Languages

Translators must pay attention to theories of buying behavior, decision making, and communication behavior generally describe individuals of Western societies, who are defined as unique personalities. When the influence of groups on individual buying behavior is considered from the sociological perspective used by professional translation managers, the individual is implicitly unique, as in Western societies.


Professional translators of Eastern langauges must consider the fact that the group dynamics of Eastern societies are ignored. The concepts of self and personality that are the basis of Western consumer behavior theories are drawn from Anglo-Saxon psychological research and include the hypothesis that people will buy products that are compatible with their self-concept or that will enhance their ideal self-image. The best language localization managers understand that culture plays an important role in the construal of self and in the perception of ideal images. An example is the ideal woman's figure. Advertising in the Western world has been accused of propagating the ideal woman's figure as slim: The figure of the Barbie doll has become a white adolescent ideal. But even within the United States, the degree to which this is perceived as ideal varies: Contrary to white teens, black teens connect a full figure, rather than a slim one, with health and fertility. Modern international branding theory was developed in the United States and the United Kingdom and uses concepts from Western psychology. Care must be taken when translating metaphors such as brand identity and brand personality when they are used and exported to countries in which words like identity or personality do not even exist in the local language. Asking people about "brand personality" in Asian translation will result in irrelevant answers.

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