Yve Delaquis feels affected by one thing in particular: Accuracy and quality are demanded less and less, most people think: "I can do the job myself and, tant pis, if not everything is right. No one will complain anyway." With professional linguists or journalists, this also happens more and more often. "Anyone can write, edit, proofread, translate, right?" she says, slightly ironically. But: "You have just seen, haven't you, Madame, how someone can write in German," Yve Delaquis refers to textual contributions that come to her via her website or LinkedIn profile, sometimes with many errors. "Why don't people read through something like that?" she asks, advising people to read aloud what they've written in between. When you then hear the sentence, you notice that this or that is limping, something is missing, whether there is a contradiction or the statement is not clear. One writes mostly for oneself and does not notice that others cannot understand the train of thought if it is not explained comprehensibly. "We professional service providers all live today with significantly less turnover than we did five years ago," she says, changing the subject without transition or digression. The Internet is mainly to blame, she says. But it's also about saving money. Which is somehow an incomprehensible contradiction. Especially when, for example, after the renaming of Swissair to Swiss, one learns that the "London-based agency" collected four million - "don't hold me to the exact amount" - in order to remove just three letters. When people knock on her door for a slogan and she then asks for three days to do it - with the calculation of 500 to 600 francs per slogan - the reaction is often along these lines: "Jaaaa, das isch aber tüür."
Another effect since the advent of the Internet is that the relationship with the customer is lost, since they never meet again. Delaquis mentions Migros as an example. A few years ago, their product line was renamed. In the end, they decided on the "I am" slogan. Delaquis, as a linguist, was also invited by the think tank commissioned for this purpose. After some hesitation, Delaquis then explains in more concrete terms what she doesn't like about the Migros slogan. "I am" may be short, but it says little and makes no reference or connection to the product. A small survey should always be conducted for slogans to see whether they are understood by the "man on the street. Delaquis cites the McDonald's slogan "I'm loving it" as a comparison. This one is grammatically completely wrong, but everyone can remember it. She is generally annoyed by this English trend: "I still very often work with Greek and Latin - and not English," she emphasizes. So she feels the duzen, even in radio and television advertising, is not a good solution. Because, "it is not everyone my bosom friend, I also do not want". Even if this is partly not only bad, for example in the Coop slogan "For me and you". Compared to the emotionless "I am," this slogan at least establishes a relationship.
The crux of quadrilingualism
Non-English campaigns, on the other hand, often bring an even bigger problem, according to Delaquis, especially in relation to Switzerland's quadrilingualism. Most national advertising campaigns are still created in German-speaking Switzerland, with a very regional focus. For example, Delaquis mentions the ad for Appenzeller cheese, in which the two grim men provide local ambiance, but the German actor doesn't evoke anything "familiar" at all in other parts of Switzerland. Of course, it would be expensive to shoot the same clip again with someone from Ticino and Suisse romande, she concedes. But for such nationwide products, one could also use an unknown person, because otherwise the reference would not be effective. Here it becomes quite clear: "The reference is not valid for everyone." To use the local regionally and nationally, Delaquis considers a very bad choice. A campaign should make the viewer relate to what is being presented - "the reference must be right for the target audience. With idioms, for example, it is also important to convey "the color. After all, you can't translate a sentence word for word into another language. References to people, proverbs or pictures cannot be taken over word for word either. The next step is to decide what is more important: the product or the joke or pun. It should always be noted that if something is adapted into a Latin language, this version is usually 10 to 15 percent longer. For example, when dubbing TV commercials: "When you shoot advertising campaigns and dub them, lip-sync or voiceover, you often have to turn the sentences around to match the mouth movements." Or the choice falls on a good sentence, which then may not match the lip movements one hundred percent. "Well, who else responds to mistakes? - Nobody! ", Delaquis frets. Mistakes are hardly noticed anymore, be they translation errors or simply grammatical or typing errors. Nobody reacts to them. "And this short-livedness!": Because an ad is only up for a short time, people pay even less attention to it or don't complain at all. Yve Delaquis therefore regularly writes complaints to the relevant departments.
But she rarely gets a reaction. Because, "after a short time, the campaign is gone again anyway.
Interpreting behind the curtain
The phone rings, Yve Delaquis does not spend much time explaining to the client what is meant by "liaison interpreting ", she advises her instead to go to her website Caralingua.com to leave. "Then call me again tomorrow," she replies, knowing full well that most customers don't get back to her. It is more important to her that her customers know the practical procedure and what service they actually want to use and what working conditions a good service entails. When telling, Yve Delaquis is another, she gestures, gets excited, stresses. Her composure fades as she continues to gesticulate with the same elegance. "The attitude towards our two language professions has changed dramatically," she says. In the past, interpreters were still greeted. "We also wore a badge with our name and function on it, we were perceived as useful service providers, and people at least thanked us." It wasn't a matter of prestige, which the interpreting profession in particular brought with it, Yve Delaquis emphasizes. Rather, she says, the industry has changed so much that today it's all about the money. "Order, order, order - if one comes at all - and fast, fast, fast". Interpreters today would rather be presented as a "necessary evil" or as a "translation technique for this conference". Just a quick translation, just a quick skim over a text - that's what many clients are looking for today. And in the process, respect for the profession has been lost. At certain conferences, the interpreters' booths were even hidden behind a curtain, even though this meant that much of the information important to the interpreters was no longer visible.
Certainly, Yve Delaquis is a word picker, a precise way of expression is very important to her. This becomes very apparent when you hear her speak. Every sentence is deliberate. Words like "cool, awesome, mega, crass" do not occur in her vocabulary, of course - "except in private," she interjects. She says something with every sentence. Almost every one of her utterances is shaped by linguistic influences, by the urge for knowledge and experience, for understanding foreign and one's own culture. A wealth of knowledge that makes a good interpreter, according to Delaquis.
Yve Delaquis has in her head an eclectic collection of anecdotes, quotations, idioms, and oddities. Interpreters have a similar orientation to journalists, she says: a broad knowledge is usually more essential than a single subject area in which every last detail is known.
In demand
WW: What were the biggest problems with international brands that you remember?
Yve Delaquis: The double entendre. There was a restaurant called "White Elephant," which sounds wonderful. Only, in English, a "white elephant" is a gift you'd rather not accept. Same with jubilee. Who knows that the word jubilee actually comes from the church language and means 50 years of religious affiliation? Who cares! Exactly, you don't control anything and you don't inform yourself anymore... nobody will say anything anyway.
Is it really so tragic?
It is a loss of meaning of a language, a loss of richness and diversity of any language. Customers quickly perceive it as a reproach if they are made aware of errors in their texts or speeches. In fact, many people have less and less command of their own language: not being interested in it, not daring to ask about it, has become the norm. When I receive a text and don't understand it, I call the author: "There you say black - there you say white." The response is then often, "Ah, I didn't see that." Not read through...! It's only for the Internet, or "it will only be on view for two weeks," is often said on the client side. Or: "The audience will understand it plus minus, that's enough." That's all that matters anymore. This is also a lack of appreciation for the reader. If the reader no longer knows his own language, because everything is "cool", then it is unimportant to know what we once said before "cool".
But then there are campaigns which adapt exactly this youth language...
Yes, and many campaigns express themselves without the written word. For example, a subject or a character is chosen and given a speech bubble containing only a word or a pictogram that everyone understands. For cost reasons, of course. Nevertheless, every now and then something happens: together with the Swiss Translators Association, we, professional translators, got Swisscom to the point where on their telephone directories of the time, the words "Telefonbuch, Annuaire de téléphone, Elenco telefonico" appeared first instead of the English term "Directories": it is, after all, a product for Switzerland, where English is still not a national language. I was once invited to Swisscom in Bern, and the head of communications at the time - a Frenchman - told me that he was not interested in translators: "Besides, in about ten years you won't even exist anymore, the whole planet will then communicate only in Globish (Global, English) ", the head of a telecommunications company told me.
But if everything is moving so fast, what makes you think you still want to focus on quality? What would be your argument?
If an agency told me that the campaign would only run for a month, I would say, "Then you don't really need any text at all, just make sure you have a good visual that is strong enough to get the message across. But if it's something longer-term, that's going to be relaunched every quarter, for example, with a tagline that's going to be used as a reference over and over again - then we'll sit down together. A good linguist always wants to see the subjects, even more so if there will be one version per language.
What would you do differently?
In advertising, after all, it is always expected that "le grand public" will quickly understand the message. Without assuming intellect, or at least a bit of pondering, on the part of the viewer - such as with a play on words that doesn't automatically catch the eye or get understood right away. After all, it is said that the message of an advertisement should come across within three to four seconds - but that is difficult with a poster text.
Ursina mason
