Bayer : Tripping up on translation

The devil in the detail of material in a second language.

The Site

Bayer, the German pharmaceutical and chemicals group, has produced a corporate video that, according to the site, involved 65 actors, 250 extras and extensive filming in Buenos Aires. The video is promoted in the About Us section, and has its own English-language intro page.

Anglophones will immediately be struck by the German placement of quotation marks around the title, with the opening one at the bottom of the letter, and the closing one at the top. The English, while grammatical, has several oddities including use of the expression ‘image film’, referring to the video.

The Takeaway

This page is a warning to any company that offers material in a language other than its own. While Bayer has evidently invested large sums in its video, it undermines its professionalism by making a glaringly basic error.

Bayer must have staff who know that the quotation mark convention is different in English, yet no one appears to have pointed it out. Stilted English is a more subtle problem, but one that most continental European companies have managed to tackle. Bayer thus stands out, and that is bad for its image.

The question English-speaking web people should be asking themselves is, of course, whether they are making similar blunders on their foreign language pages. What faux pas are being made in French, for example?

First published on 09 September, 2004