Translating your brand voice for international audiences

When you read a book, do the characters have different voices in your head? Does Gandalf sound the same as Gollum? This is ‘tone of voice’ in action and what gives a character a distinct identity. So, how can you apply this to your brand to make it memorable?

Your brand’s tone of voice is how it sounds to your clients or consumers. It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. It can be formal, funny, brazen, zany, plain… What matters is that it’s consistent. That’s what makes it recognisable.

Are you tone deaf?

Although it’s quite subtle, most brands have an image they want people to conjure up when they address their customers or in their communications. A tone of voice is designed with its audience in mind and is what helps a brand connect with its customers on a personal level through patterns and familiarity. The more people are familiar with how your brand sounds, the closer they feel to it.

This is true for general communications, but also social media, where 34% of consumers say they want to see social posts from brands that highlight their personality. It is therefore important to craft your tone of voice to be recognised in different contexts. Think of the distinctly Google-esque “Aw, Snap!” error message which every Chrome user is familiar with. In fact, their style guide is freely available online, so we can spot their ‘conversational and friendly’ tone from a mile off.

Making sure your voice carries overseas

So, brands clearly put the hours in to hit the right notes with their audience. But how does this work in other languages? When it comes to translating tone of voice, you need to consider how it will be received. Nobody wants to shout into the void.

Will ‘super-friendly-just-like-you-guys’ work in countries with an entire grammatical construct dedicated to being extra polite and respectful to strangers? One example is the use of the formal and informal register when writing, particularly with regards to the word ‘you.’ To native English speakers, it may seem like an innocuous difference, but to many international audiences, it can completely change the way your brand is perceived. In Italy and Spain, brands usually opt for the less formal ‘tu’ or ‘tú’ respectively. However, when we look at francophone audiences in France and Belgium, the formal ‘vous’ and the informal ‘tu’ are used by different types of brands: vous for traditional or luxury brands while modern, quirky brands are often opting for tu.

One of the brands getting it right in terms of targeted and localised content and tone of voice is Duolingo. Its social media presence, to some, might on the surface seem careless and unserious, but its large follower counts and engagement prove that it’s hitting the nail on the head. In one of their posts, the Duolingo TikTok account for Germany (@duolingodeutschland), featured their mascot, a bright green bird named Duo, dressed in a black, industrial, strappy ensemble walking up to Berghain, a famous Berlin nightclub that only permits entry with a certain dress code. Meanwhile, the Duolingo Japan TikTok features a video of Duo in a Japanese dating simulation game. You are the protagonist, confessing to Duo that you like him, only to be rejected when the bird finds out that you haven’t been doing your lessons. These posts, between them, have thousands of likes and views. They play on real experiences that their audience (mainly Gen Z and millennials) can easily recognise and identify with.

How does it work in practice?

Your tone of voice is not just the words you use, it shows in everything your brand creates: your creative copy of course, but also your typography, visuals, and the colours you use. On top of that, it doesn’t necessarily adapt easily in a different language or cultural context.

What can be seen as sassy or sarcastic in one country could fall flat and be perceived as disrespectful in another. This is why the Tone of Voice is an integral part of a transcreation brief. So how can you say the same thing differently so that you don’t alienate any of your customers?

Conducting an audit of your target audience(s) and language(s) can help adapt your tone of voice on a local level when you launch to a new market. By knowing your audience better, you can communicate with them in a more natural way.

At WIT, we’ve recently supported a client launching in 4 new markets and helped adapt their Tone of Voice Guidelines from scratch. We created a questionnaire and filled it in, based on our local teams’ experience and expertise, and backed it up with concrete examples from a sample of the copy we translated for our initial project.

Here are some of the things we included:

·       Tone of voice: informative, casual, conversational, fun, etc.

·       Form of address: formal or informal

·       Gender: would you recommend using gender-neutral terms or inclusive writing?

·       Keywords: what are the key terms used and how do they translate?

·       Capitalisation: do you need to capitalise certain words in the target language? Is title case more common than sentence case?

·       Punctuation: an exclamation mark doesn’t carry the same weight in all languages (are you excited or SHOUTING?). This can go from adding non-breaking spaces before symbols to adding a colon after your client’s name in an email greeting – small detail that matter. 

·       Language variants: are there big regional differences you should be aware of? 

·       Competition: stylistic analysis and comparison

It’s important to include your local teams when talking about tone of voice guidance and keeping your brand pitch perfect. After all, the point is not only to establish a consistent tone of voice moving forward, but also to recognise that your strategy is likely to change slightly based on factors like social media platform, country, language, culture, and target demographics. All of these elements can influence all aspects of your branding, from the logo to the colours to the register you speak in.

By involving your in-market colleagues as early as possible in the process, they can offer valuable insight into the differences of how your brand is perceived abroad, and give suggestions on how to adapt your brand’s tone of voice culturally and linguistically, to ensure that your brand resonates with local audiences and create local impact.