à l'urne

04:11 Sep 28, 2008 

Hi everyone - thanks for all your thoughts on the matter, I really didn't mean for this to be more complicated than it is. The survey response is in French, my task is to translate it into English. At the end of the day, the respondent thought that the [at this point made up/potential] name of the medication s/he just heard sounded like "to the ballot box" in French. Thanks!

08:23 Sep 23, 2008 

Unless, of course, you are supposed to be answering as a French speaker, in which case the whole question should be in French.

08:21 Sep 23, 2008 

...I have done these sort of surveys where the potential names have been entirely made up (i.e. not in any particular language) the question is, what associations do these words have for an English ear?

08:18 Sep 23, 2008 

agree with mediamatrix - presumably you are answering this survey as an English speaker. The company wants to be aware of associations that names they choose may have in ENGLISH. The fact that these words are in French is irrelevant.

07:55 Sep 23, 2008 

Hello Ken - would it help if we knew the potential name?

02:44 Sep 23, 2008 

mediamatrix: 1:49am Sep 23, 2008: Then surely you need to 'explain' the associations and their respective connotations (good or bad), not translate them. In the example 'lune, à l'urne,...' the words are quesi-homonyms, but will not be remotely homonymic in English so the ...
mediamatrix: 1:50am Sep 23, 2008: ... translation of those terms 'moon, to the polls, ...' will in no way convey the nature of the problem to your client.
mediamatrix: 1:51am Sep 23, 2008: "that's what translators are for" - Is it?

02:02 Sep 23, 2008 

This is the nature of the particular arrangement I have with my client for this ongoing project. Otherwise, I would be inclined to offer more insight. Thanks for your thoughts.

01:59 Sep 23, 2008 

The description of the problem that you mention would definitely be a more thorough service package. This work is for an agency, they provide the consultation and localisation support to the end-user. You're right, my sentence does identify 'this kind of thing' as being the function of translators; this is inaccurate, or at least unclear: the translating the words part is the domain of the translator in this particular case. The localisation service provider is responsible for explaining such homonymic relationships as may exist.

01:43 Sep 23, 2008 

The object is not necessarily to elicit fortuitous associations, but associations of whatever kind exist among the target group. If the product sounds like soap or another product or something obscene in a certain language, the development people want to know what that is. I completely agree that this kind of thing is difficult to do across language barriers, but thankfully, that's what translators are for. 'Qualitative' does not mean 'positive' in my previous sentence, if that's where that came from.

01:30 Sep 23, 2008 

Since the exercise was concerned with discovering fortuitous associations with the name of a product, and the respondents answered in French, I really don't see the point of trying to translate their replies. Please clarify.

00:22 Sep 23, 2008 

Of course the phrase "aller à l'urne" has to do with voting... but here it seems like they're just mentioning random words that sound like the medication name... Very difficult to capture both the sound and the meaning in an English translation! Maybe mention something like "ballot-box" but then it no longer sounds like "l'urne" or "lune."