Philipp Lenssen commented t’other day on a study conducted in Germany which looked at how many English language advertisement slogans were actually understood by non-native audiences.

According to Lenssen, in Germany, using English words in advertising campaigns is very popular but can lead to a lot of confusion when key values are lost in translation.

Of the 1014 people questioned in Hamburg, Cologne, Leipzig and Munich by Spiegel Online only one in four Germans correctly understand the true meaning behind the English slogan.

The German automaker Opel uses the English slogan “Explore the City Limits” which was sometimes translated to “Explosionnen der Stadtgrenze”, which renders back to “Explosions at the City Limits”.

Conversely, here in England, we too have been exposed to foreign language slogans which often reinforce values which are removed from the understanding of the phrase itself. Take Audi’s slogan “Vorsprung durch Technik” which is the focus of their marketing campaign. Translated into English this means ‘Progress through Technology’, but the foreignness adds a great deal of impetus to what would otherwise be a rather uninspiring and run-of-the-mill phrase. Audi’s slogan plays on the public’s pre-conceptions that German engineering is thorough and efficient.

Our French cousins however, take a different view from their Germanic neighbours on the usage of English words in advertising – something which has often bemused me on my frequent visits to Burgandy to visit my in-laws.

In 1994, France’s National Assembly enacted the so-called Loi Toubon, a law named for its champion, the then French Culture Minister, Jacques Toubon. The law called for a ban, enforceable by fines and by prison terms, on the use of foreign words in business or government communications, in broadcasting, and in advertising if ‘suitable equivalents’ existed in French. A committee had previously been established to draw up suitable equivalents where none existed; the committee’s work has resulted in the coining of 3,500 new French words, mostly to replace English-language ones.

France’s Constitutional Council, the country’s highest judicial body, eventually weakened the law, applying it only to government documents but we still see French print and broadcast advertisements littered with asterisks every time an Anglicism is used in a slogan. Whilst I don’t wish to belittle the efforts to protect the future of the French language against the tide of Anglo-American culture which threatens global linguistic hegemony, sometimes this is taken too far. I once saw the word ‘weekend’ (an English word which is used in common parlance by all in France) being asterisked and translated in small print as ‘fin de la semaine’ just in case there was any confusion.

Anyway, it is clear that brands need to think closely about the potential misinterpretation of slogans or foreign words used in campaigns and overall branding.

Perhaps more bizarrely, YouTube’s “Broadcast Yourself” has been misinterpreted by some German users as “Feed Yourself” as well as “Mache Deinen Brotkasten Selbst” which literally means…

“create your own bread box”

Is this a sign that global branding campaigns are going stale…?