Moscow, December 1st 2006 – Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, the only Russian marketing agency for IT companies, would like to announce… Hey, hold up! This is a public announcement and in its official press releases, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern is committed to getting away from the dry, bureaucratic style – which, let’s face it – we have more than enough of in the Russian press. So what, if we are surrounded by a sea of vague officialese? We are out to build an island of direct and transparent communication!
We are proud to announce the successful completion of a key project: the localisation into Russian of the US-based company Kerio’s website and marketing materials at the request of its official representative in Russia: Softkey. Yes, you heard right: localisation and not translation. You can feel the difference, right? We’ve lost count of the times we had to laugh at mangled phrases produced by the mass of translators who have often progressed no further than PROMP’a who render the English concept of Windows into Russian as panes, secure connection as reliable contact, and firewall as wall of flame. In all other respects such translators do a great job: correct grammar, the right use of tenses, pronouns and punctuation. You can’t find fault with a thing – they are translators after all.
At Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, we take a radically different approach to the rendering of marketing materials into foreign languages. We don’t translate. We localise. Every language has its conventions (especially in IT), slang, and cultural peculiarities (and IT is no exception here, either). It is vital to be aware of the competitive environment and to have worked in IT for a number of years. You need to feel the nuance of each word and be possessed of a sufficient sense of both the logical and the sublime to be able to write not simply a text, but a balanced image made of words. Such a picture must be pleasing both to the mind and the eye and should be understood in the terms of the cultural nuances of the target language.
A marketing text differs greatly from a literary text. While in the latter case, the “localiser” has a certain amount of wriggle room and creative license, in the first case he does not. He has to know exactly which words, expressions and set phrases to use, both to generate interest in the reader and then to convince him of the benefits of the product, leading to the desire to purchase. In essence, a “localiser” of marketing materials is creating an armour-piercing tool with which to breach the mind of the consumer to occupy a secure place on his ladder of preferences, or even to form a new product category and associate it with the given brand. It is vital that every word selected be a perfect fit. The better the fit, the more effective the copy. It’s as simple as that.
We hope you will indulge us and that this small digression has given you an idea of our approach to localisation – one geared exclusively to achieving clients’ business goals.
Besides the localisation of marketing and training materials, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern also had the content put online on Kerio’s website. We enjoyed working with the company and with its official representative in Russia – Softkey – and look forward to future projects with them.
