Setting the right tone when translating digital content to Hebrew
When we speak about the ‘tone’ of a text, we speak about how the info is provided, and how the way it’s provided affects its hidden message. For example, when we want to instruct the users about what they should do when their log in doesn’t work, we can do it in many ways, each sending a different message:
1. ‘’Forgot your password?’’
The tone: blaming the users for their poor memory, and not leaving any room for log in issues on the system’s end. Hidden message: If you can’t log in, it must be your poor memory. We don’t take any responsibility for issues caused by bugs in our system.
2. ‘’Forgot your user ID or password?’’
The tone: blaming the users’ poor memory, not leaving any room for system’s issues, and: if you don’t know what you got wrong (user ID or Password), you will have no solution.
3. ‘’Problem with login?’’
The Tone: log in problems are expected when using our system, but we don’t blame anyone.
4. ‘’Need help?’’
The tone: If you need help, it’s here for you, short & simple, and we don’t blame anyone.
As you can see in these examples, they all provide the same info (links to instructions for solving log in issues), but the ways they provide it (the tone), have very different affects. And though it’s hard to define what a ‘tone’ is, it’s easy to see that Google got the best one in this case.
The issue:
Applying the right tone with translated content is one of the most complicated aspects of translation, mostly because ‘tone’ is such an elusive term. Looking it up in a dictionary won’t help much. And many translators tend to ignore things they can’t find in a dictionary.
Usability professionals seem to agree that digital content should be simplified, and content people in Israel have set the standard of articulate spoken language. Yet, some Hebrew translators like to use a more formal language, as they believe it’s more '’dignified’’. Even when the source uses spoken language, with abbreviations such as ‘info’, ‘pics’, and contractions (isn’t, can’t etc’), the translators still feel obliged to ‘’upgrade’’ the language to a higher level that they think is more appropriate.
Obviously, some languages require this kind of ‘’upgrade’’, as their local tone is more formal. Such are languages that in their spoken version, address friends and family in the third person. But Hebrew used in Israel today is very informal and direct. In fact, some people address strangers as ‘my brother / sister’, and we do our best to avoid addressing strangers as ‘sir’ or ’madam’. Hence, when we ‘’upgrade’’ the language in Hebrew translation we risk creating a distance from the users, that is not culturally appropriate.
It’s not about the translator
As translators, we need to remember, that we are not the owners of the text we are translating. Our job isn’t to ‘’improve’’ the text, but to find the best way to translate it while keeping the source’s voice. So, if the source uses spoken language (i.e. abbreviations and contractions), and spoken language is used in the native digital content, the accurate Hebrew translation should be in articulate spoken language. If the source uses a friendly informal tone, it is our job to keep that tone in the translation, even when we, personally, prefer an impersonal language that keeps a distance from the users.
Applying brand tone according to global guidelines
Many international brands have guidelines for the tone they want to apply to their content. These guidelines can tell us what the characteristics of the ‘tone’ should be (such as: friendly, informal, innovative etc’) but then it’s our job to find the way to apply this tone to our Hebrew translation. To do so, we must keep the tone guidelines in mind with every word we translate. If our tone is ‘innovative’, we shouldn’t use old fashioned terms instead of known up- to-date terms. And if it’s a ‘friendly’ tone, we should avoid blaming our users, even when the source is doing that. So, sometimes, applying the right tone means changing the text a little. And many times it means choosing the more appropriate term.
Tone and localization
Going back to Google, when we click the ‘’Need help?’’ link, we get the perfect example for a source that is a bit out of tone, gone totally out of line in its Hebrew translation:
Here, ‘’Having trouble signing in?’’ (that could have been more friendly as ‘’Get help signing in:’’), was translated to Hebrew as ‘’Don’t succeed signing in?’’, which doesn’t only blame the users, but also turns them into failures.
This way of blaming the users for '’not succeeding'’ is common in Hebrew translations, but not in Hebrew native content. Which brings us to the inevitable conclusion: Sometimes, setting the right tone means localizing the translation…
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