Why translation in the social media field

Two months ago I started to work at HootSuite, a Canadian company that created a social media management tool. Although my background is translation, the passion for social media led me on this new professional path. Super excited of being immersed in this social media world, I found myself actually doing a lot of translation. Seems like we can’t run from our destiny after all. And this is perfect, since I can now work on two of my greatest passions: languages and social media.

Translation in the social media field is a lot of fun, but also a challenging task. Now more than ever I find myself dealing with words that don’t exist in my language. Although this problem has always been central in my studies to the extent of becoming also the subject of my Master’s dissertation (“Non equivalences in marketing”) I am now facing a new set of challenges. These challenges inspired me to write this article, and since Catherine is a huge social media fan, her blog seemed to me the perfect place to talk about this.

WHAT IS SOCIAL MEDIA?

I don’t know if there is someone who still doesn’t know what social media is, but just in case, a quick recap: social media is a new communication system that allows people to connect with each other online. It started with MySpace, it bloomed with Facebook, and it grew with LinkedIn, Twitter and many others. It is also a system that has completely changed the relationship between people and brands. Unlike advertisement, where companies were trying to catch the attention of customers, social media allows people to share their interest, allowing brands to understand their customer behavior instead of trying to change it. Well, this is at least the way I see it.

WHAT ARE THE CHALLENGES OF TRANSLATING IN THE SOCIAL MEDIA FIELD?

The main challenge of social media is the new terminology that it introduced. All the main players are American…

Read more | linguagreca.com/blog

Photo credit | “Instagram and other Social Media Apps” by Jason Howie on Flickr