The harm ony of sound and meaning gener ates brand value
For global brand s to suc ceed in the Chinese market , it is not just a trans liter ation , Nam ing strategi es root ed in cultural context ; It is essential . The Chinese name of E vian " Y iy un " is a typ ical example of this , which beautiful ly portr ays the image of the mist y moun tains of E vian - les - Ba ins , France , the water source , in a po etic expression of " c udd ling up to the cloud s . "
The name is influ enced by classi cal Chinese liter ature and rec alls the lands cape scene of " le aning on the h ills ide of cloud s " . what consumers receive from the goods Emo tional Val ue In order to max imize the visual beauty of the kanji and the sound of the pronunci ation , it can be said that the result is precis ely designed .
Suc cess stories of mul til ingu al marketing
Nike ' s " N ike " combin es the kanji for " end urance " and " over coming " to express the core values of the sports brand . BMW ' s " BM W " (Pa omer : Pre cious Hor se) combin es the high performance of German cars with the legend of the Chinese " Tho us and Mile Hor se " . Cultural affin ities We created it .
These ex amples show that there are three elements of a good trad emark translation :
- Trans liter ation based on respect ing the pronunci ation of the original language
- Pos itive rec all ing in target culture
- Ess ential inher it ance of brand identity
The Strateg ic Sig nific ance of Chinese Tr adem ark Registr ation
Against the back dr op of critic ism that the expression " G ol den Arch " is anach ron istic , Lo ca lization of trad emar ks There is a lack of understanding of . It is believed that McDonald ' s registered the " G ol den Arch " in China was not just a literal translation , but had the following strateg ic intention :
- Es tab lish ing a mem orable visual image for Chinese consumers
- The character " G in " brings good fort une and a sense of lux ury .
- Ens ure cons isten cy of local corpor ate name and brand name
In fact , in China ' s trad emark law , " re lev ant public aw aren ess " is an important judgment criteri on , so trad emark registration in the local language Int elle ctual property protection It is also necessary from a point of view . The importance of this can be seen in the stat istics of 2019 when the Chinese trad emark registration rate of major foreign brand s reached 87%.
Future pros pe cts for cultural translation
In the digital age , brand names go beyond mere language transform ation . Cross - c ultural stor yt elling It is evol ving to . For example , Starbucks ' " Star bu cks " (S ink C oker) combin ed the " star " logo with " gram " (vi ct ory) to create a new story of a place for urban d wel lers to " over come " the fat igue of the day .
In the future , even as AI translation technology develop s , it understand s the cultural context human cre ativ ity . It will be the key to creating a good brand . It is antici pat ed that the time will come when global brand s will invol ve not only lingu ists , but also cultural an throp ologists and po ets in the process of translation into local languages .