look at my testicles - holiday guest blogger #2

Holiday Guest Blogger # 2

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If you think it’s easy to tack a Spanish-language version of a spot onto one you’re already shooting in English, you may want to keep an eye on your nuts.  

I say this because the folks at Slap Chop didn’t. Spokesguy Vince took a valiant stab at speaking Spanish and selling the product at the same time.  Unfortunately, he was working off a script that didn’t take regional slang into consideration.  The literal translation of ¡Mira mi huevo!, which Vince enthusiastically intones, is “Look at my egg!”  But one country’s egg is another country’s (fairly) unmentionable.  

So basically the Spanish version of Slap Chop not only dices eggs and tuna and fruit, it mashes testicles as well. It’s not just our infomercial friends who make hash of the Spanish language, either.  A large advertiser recently ran a nationwide spot that, in English, was tasteful and sweet and funny.  The Spanish-language version kept the same set and lighting and art direction and simply swapped out all the English speakers for Spanish ones.  Except, as in the Slap Chop, nobody was paying attention to the script.  

The lead actress, a fluent Spanish speaker, later revealed how uncomfortable she was being given a script that wasn’t grammatically correct.  She pointed the error out to the director, who pointed it out to the agency and production company, but the consensus was that someone, somewhere, had translated the script and it had to be correct. So that’s the way she had to speak the lines, and that’s the way the commercial ran, in heavy rotation – a very expensive, glossy, beautiful spot with macerated dialogue that provoked giggles every time fluent Spanish speakers heard it.     

When nobody’s keeping an eye on the words, the result is that Spanish-language audiences get the short end of the advertising stick—and they know it then blog, Twitter and Facebook about it.  And poke fun at the advertisers, the actors, and the product.  There are several thousand web pages and postings about Vince’s testicle debacle that can attest to that.  

If the only person on your entire production who can point out grammatical errors in the spot is the actor, you’ve got bigger problems than just the dialogue.  There’s a reason that Hispanic ad agencies and production companies exist, and it’s because of those language and (more importantly) cultural translation issues.  

It’s not enough to just take an American General Market ad, translate it into Spanish and think it’s going to fly in the US and/or Latin America—not when there are at least a eleven different ways to translate the word “straw” in twice as many countries, and making the slightest error in translation means asking the audience to enjoy sipping your cool, refreshing new drink pouch through a whistle or a cigarette.         

So, is there a way to make sure you’re not linguistically Slap Chopping your English ad?  Yes, make sure there’s an actual Spanish-speaking writer involved in your production, one who understands the differences in a number of Latin cultures.  You can’t rely on someone who took high school Spanish, or is using an online translator, or who speaks Spanish with their grandparents but never studied or used it professionally to determine how you’ll be received in a foreign language. 

Because Mark Twain said that the difference between the right word and almost the right word is the difference between lighting and the lightning bug…Or in Slap Chop parlance, it’s the difference between your egg and you nut. 

Bernadette Rivero is the VP of Development at The Cortez Brothers, an LA-based production company that knows how to make a mean Cuban coffee.