The language fetishist
30 years ago, Adrian Peter founded the translation agency USG in Bern while working as a copywriter and CD in Germany. Since 2006, Adrian Peter has once again been the managing director of USG. His hobbyhorse: translating advertising copy.
Adrian Peter (54) loves language. And he knows what he doesn't want. That has always been the case. As a boy at boarding school in Schiers and Samedan, he wrote dirty stories and wore his hair long. A lateral thinker and rebel who also stands out from the crowd. After graduating from business school, Peter discovered an ad from Young & Rubicam in Berne: "Copywriter wanted. "I had nothing to do with advertising," Peter recounts. "But I was good at writing. So I called the agency and asked for the job."
"Just come over," says the former CD of the agency Hansjörg Zürcher. Peter, who is currently in the shower, replies, "I can't, I'm all wet." "It's now or never," is the reply. Peter sets off - and gets the job: the starting signal for his copywriting career in Switzerland and Germany.
Adrian Peter works as a junior copywriter at Young & Rubicam for a year, then moves to GGK in Frankfurt as a copywriter. "I really wanted to work with Uwe Ortstein, the inventor of the purple cow," he recalls. "I didn't even intend to stay there long - but in the end it turned out to be twelve years." From Ortstein, the young language worker learned that advertising works particularly well when it is reduced and alienated. "Advertising is like a poem," Peter says. "Poem in the sense of condensation. It compresses messages and gets thoughts to the point. That's always fascinated me."
In 1979, parallel to his copywriting work, Adrian Peter founded the translation service AG USG in Bern-Ittigen. The young creative speaks not only Bärndütsch and High German, but also fluent English, French and Italian - and is asked more and more frequently whether he could produce the slogan he has just thought up in German in one of "his" foreign languages. "That's when I had the idea of setting up a translation service. That was a real gap in the market 30 years ago," says Peter. The idea took off: Within five years, USG matures into one of the largest translation companies in Switzerland. In 1987, branches opened in Geneva and Zurich, and in 1991 USG broke the magic barrier of 30 employees. Peter later sells the Geneva and Zurich branches and concentrates fully on the Bern headquarters. Today, USG has 21 permanent employees and over 95 freelancers translating texts into 33 languages: German, English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Flemish, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Czech, Slovak, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Polish, Slovenian, Croatian, Serbian, Russian, Romanian, Greek, Turkish, Arabic, Persian, Thai, Chinese, Korean and Japanese. Around 1,000 customers rely on USG's language expertise, many of them since the language service was founded.
"Many of our translators have also been with us for a long time," says Peter. "Building a base of qualified translators has taken time. Professionals like the ones we work with just aren't found everywhere." All USG employees translate exclusively into their native languages. In its 33 languages, USG covers finance, business, technology, communications and advertising. In addition, Peter's employees are native to Swiss as well as German and Austrian idioms.
Peters Sprachenservice celebrates success in Switzerland, while he himself continues his career in Germany: After working for GGK in Düsseldorf and Munich, the Bern native moves to Hamburg in 1981. At DMM (now D'Arcy), he worked as a CD for Mars, Colgate-Palmolive and Stimorol, among others. In 1985, Peter participated in the founding of the Cat Advertising agency in Bern and Düsseldorf, which served clients such as Grundig, Mack, Circus Knie and the Banca della Svizzera Italiana with clever ideas. In 1993, Peter joins BMZ Düsseldorf as a CD. "In six months, under my creative direction, we won over 60 million euros in new business with contracts for Gore-Tex, CMA and Sat.1," Peter reports. "I simply have a feel for how advertising has to be in order for it to be received. And when I have a vision, I get it down on paper."
In 1995, a new contract makes Peter's coffers ring: Dieter Meier and Boris Blank's Swiss electropop duo Yello awards Adrian Peter the worldwide rights for the commercial marketing of their music for two years. From 2006 on, Peter's music is mainly played in Switzerland again: He works as a CD at Lang Gysi Knoll (today Neue LGK) and takes over the management of USG again. But this does not mean that Germany is over: Peter maintains a joint venture with the Stuttgart advertising agency "die Insel" and the Ludwigsburg agency Wensauer & Partner. In 2000, Peter and Marc Brunner from Destruct and their two-man agency Cat won the pitch for the Swiss Post's Yellowworld Internet portal. With their ideas, they beat out Farner Publicis, among others. Since 2002, Peter has also worked as a freelance CD, screenwriter, copywriter and journalist for SoDa magazine. Peter's latest coup: the opening of a USG branch in Stuttgart. He currently employs two people at the branch, which opened in February.
Adrian Peter says what he thinks. And he also writes it. He has something against "Werbetüdelidü" and euphemisms, against language slurring and unnecessarily rigid rules that restrict the creativity of language. "We're allowed to be bolder," Peter says provocatively. "Other languages do it that way, too: the plural of bratwurst in English is called bratwursts, not bratwursts. No Brit or American gets upset about this un-German plural formation. So let's dare to be a little more daring and just say 'shopped,' 'mailed,' and 'designed' until someone else imitates it." After a while, the "German look" of the language then spreads, Peter says, and is understood without difficulty. "Language is wonderful," he enthuses. "It's so alive and receptive. And it's the toughest weapon of all: language can build people up - and it can destroy them." Peter has no problem with anglicisms or youth language. That one understands what is meant by "Do you have subway? - Nah, I've got a bike!" is a testament to the fantastic power and vitality of language. What would he do if he were mute? Peter laughs. "Then I would write. I would learn shorthand so I could write as fast as I could speak. I would fight for my language and not let it be taken away from me." Peter also demonstrates his love of language with his sharp-tongued newsletter, which he sends out to around 13,000 subscribers every month.
Peter benefits from his linguistic creativity when translating advertising copy and slogans. It is the field he plows at USG together with three employees. "USG is the only office in the area that offers translations of advertising texts into German, French, English and Italian," Peter proudly emphasizes. The difficult type of text often works with puns, proverbs, metaphors or other linguistic devices that only work in the original language. Anyone who wants to translate slogans or advertising texts into a foreign language therefore needs not only a precise knowledge of the source and target languages, but also a great deal of intuition. An example: USG was asked to translate the word "Bärenhunger" (bear hunger) for a national campaign that had already been designed - but this word does not exist in the target language. What to do? "Then you make it wolf hunger," Peter explains. "In Italian, for example, you speak of 'fame di lupo,' 'fame d'orso' doesn't exist. In German, on the other hand, you also understand wolf hunger. So in that language, you can safely use that term as well."
After all the comprehension pitfalls had been removed from the text, however, the subject no longer matched the text: For the agency had depicted the bear suffering from hunger. A bear with a wolf's appetite - that would have pleased neither the wolves nor the consumers. So the agency turned the bear into a wolf and thus avoided an embarrassing advertising mishap. It is a truism for advertising professionals that successful advertising measures should speak the language of the target group. At USG, this insight takes on a double meaning.
Depending on the complexity of the texts, Peter and his colleagues offer different translation modes: from a simple literal translation to the six-eye principle, which includes proofreading and editorial work. High-quality image brochures, advertising copy, or slogans for TV commercials are usually reformulated in the target language. "We try to transfer texts without interpretation or judgment in such a way that they come as close as possible to the author's intention and that they are definitely understood correctly in the foreign language," Peter explains. "That's back-breaking work. We're not interested in vanity; we're interested in the matter at hand."
USG is radically committed to making language work. This can sometimes mean that USG customers hear "That's not how it's understood." See Bear Hunger. That's exactly what Peter means when he pointedly says on the USG company brochure, "Good translators go to heaven, bad ones go into business with you." In Bern-Ittigen, the bad is the enemy of the good.
Anne-Friederike Wilhelm
"Just come over," says the former CD of the agency Hansjörg Zürcher. Peter, who is currently in the shower, replies, "I can't, I'm all wet." "It's now or never," is the reply. Peter sets off - and gets the job: the starting signal for his copywriting career in Switzerland and Germany.
Adrian Peter works as a junior copywriter at Young & Rubicam for a year, then moves to GGK in Frankfurt as a copywriter. "I really wanted to work with Uwe Ortstein, the inventor of the purple cow," he recalls. "I didn't even intend to stay there long - but in the end it turned out to be twelve years." From Ortstein, the young language worker learned that advertising works particularly well when it is reduced and alienated. "Advertising is like a poem," Peter says. "Poem in the sense of condensation. It compresses messages and gets thoughts to the point. That's always fascinated me."
In 1979, parallel to his copywriting work, Adrian Peter founded the translation service AG USG in Bern-Ittigen. The young creative speaks not only Bärndütsch and High German, but also fluent English, French and Italian - and is asked more and more frequently whether he could produce the slogan he has just thought up in German in one of "his" foreign languages. "That's when I had the idea of setting up a translation service. That was a real gap in the market 30 years ago," says Peter. The idea took off: Within five years, USG matures into one of the largest translation companies in Switzerland. In 1987, branches opened in Geneva and Zurich, and in 1991 USG broke the magic barrier of 30 employees. Peter later sells the Geneva and Zurich branches and concentrates fully on the Bern headquarters. Today, USG has 21 permanent employees and over 95 freelancers translating texts into 33 languages: German, English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Flemish, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Czech, Slovak, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Polish, Slovenian, Croatian, Serbian, Russian, Romanian, Greek, Turkish, Arabic, Persian, Thai, Chinese, Korean and Japanese. Around 1,000 customers rely on USG's language expertise, many of them since the language service was founded.
"Many of our translators have also been with us for a long time," says Peter. "Building a base of qualified translators has taken time. Professionals like the ones we work with just aren't found everywhere." All USG employees translate exclusively into their native languages. In its 33 languages, USG covers finance, business, technology, communications and advertising. In addition, Peter's employees are native to Swiss as well as German and Austrian idioms.
Peters Sprachenservice celebrates success in Switzerland, while he himself continues his career in Germany: After working for GGK in Düsseldorf and Munich, the Bern native moves to Hamburg in 1981. At DMM (now D'Arcy), he worked as a CD for Mars, Colgate-Palmolive and Stimorol, among others. In 1985, Peter participated in the founding of the Cat Advertising agency in Bern and Düsseldorf, which served clients such as Grundig, Mack, Circus Knie and the Banca della Svizzera Italiana with clever ideas. In 1993, Peter joins BMZ Düsseldorf as a CD. "In six months, under my creative direction, we won over 60 million euros in new business with contracts for Gore-Tex, CMA and Sat.1," Peter reports. "I simply have a feel for how advertising has to be in order for it to be received. And when I have a vision, I get it down on paper."
In 1995, a new contract makes Peter's coffers ring: Dieter Meier and Boris Blank's Swiss electropop duo Yello awards Adrian Peter the worldwide rights for the commercial marketing of their music for two years. From 2006 on, Peter's music is mainly played in Switzerland again: He works as a CD at Lang Gysi Knoll (today Neue LGK) and takes over the management of USG again. But this does not mean that Germany is over: Peter maintains a joint venture with the Stuttgart advertising agency "die Insel" and the Ludwigsburg agency Wensauer & Partner. In 2000, Peter and Marc Brunner from Destruct and their two-man agency Cat won the pitch for the Swiss Post's Yellowworld Internet portal. With their ideas, they beat out Farner Publicis, among others. Since 2002, Peter has also worked as a freelance CD, screenwriter, copywriter and journalist for SoDa magazine. Peter's latest coup: the opening of a USG branch in Stuttgart. He currently employs two people at the branch, which opened in February.
Adrian Peter says what he thinks. And he also writes it. He has something against "Werbetüdelidü" and euphemisms, against language slurring and unnecessarily rigid rules that restrict the creativity of language. "We're allowed to be bolder," Peter says provocatively. "Other languages do it that way, too: the plural of bratwurst in English is called bratwursts, not bratwursts. No Brit or American gets upset about this un-German plural formation. So let's dare to be a little more daring and just say 'shopped,' 'mailed,' and 'designed' until someone else imitates it." After a while, the "German look" of the language then spreads, Peter says, and is understood without difficulty. "Language is wonderful," he enthuses. "It's so alive and receptive. And it's the toughest weapon of all: language can build people up - and it can destroy them." Peter has no problem with anglicisms or youth language. That one understands what is meant by "Do you have subway? - Nah, I've got a bike!" is a testament to the fantastic power and vitality of language. What would he do if he were mute? Peter laughs. "Then I would write. I would learn shorthand so I could write as fast as I could speak. I would fight for my language and not let it be taken away from me." Peter also demonstrates his love of language with his sharp-tongued newsletter, which he sends out to around 13,000 subscribers every month.
Peter benefits from his linguistic creativity when translating advertising copy and slogans. It is the field he plows at USG together with three employees. "USG is the only office in the area that offers translations of advertising texts into German, French, English and Italian," Peter proudly emphasizes. The difficult type of text often works with puns, proverbs, metaphors or other linguistic devices that only work in the original language. Anyone who wants to translate slogans or advertising texts into a foreign language therefore needs not only a precise knowledge of the source and target languages, but also a great deal of intuition. An example: USG was asked to translate the word "Bärenhunger" (bear hunger) for a national campaign that had already been designed - but this word does not exist in the target language. What to do? "Then you make it wolf hunger," Peter explains. "In Italian, for example, you speak of 'fame di lupo,' 'fame d'orso' doesn't exist. In German, on the other hand, you also understand wolf hunger. So in that language, you can safely use that term as well."
After all the comprehension pitfalls had been removed from the text, however, the subject no longer matched the text: For the agency had depicted the bear suffering from hunger. A bear with a wolf's appetite - that would have pleased neither the wolves nor the consumers. So the agency turned the bear into a wolf and thus avoided an embarrassing advertising mishap. It is a truism for advertising professionals that successful advertising measures should speak the language of the target group. At USG, this insight takes on a double meaning.
Depending on the complexity of the texts, Peter and his colleagues offer different translation modes: from a simple literal translation to the six-eye principle, which includes proofreading and editorial work. High-quality image brochures, advertising copy, or slogans for TV commercials are usually reformulated in the target language. "We try to transfer texts without interpretation or judgment in such a way that they come as close as possible to the author's intention and that they are definitely understood correctly in the foreign language," Peter explains. "That's back-breaking work. We're not interested in vanity; we're interested in the matter at hand."
USG is radically committed to making language work. This can sometimes mean that USG customers hear "That's not how it's understood." See Bear Hunger. That's exactly what Peter means when he pointedly says on the USG company brochure, "Good translators go to heaven, bad ones go into business with you." In Bern-Ittigen, the bad is the enemy of the good.
Anne-Friederike Wilhelm
USG's copywriter-translators don't just sit around the table together in their kitchen: Samy Gillioz (French), Patricia Brand (Italian), Patrick Low (English) and Adrian Peter (German).
