How do you translate a brand not just across languages but across script systems and cultures? How do you adapt to writing systems intended in their original form for totally different writing implements? This has practical implications in cultural melting pots like New York City, of course, but as the Internet creates a veritable global village, unique issues will arise.
Take, for example, the recent decision by Facebook to require a gender designation. This decision upset members of the queer community who don't identify with traditional gender markers, and rightly so. But it also reflected the reality that many languages (Facebook supports dozens) are deeply gendered, from the gendered nouns of Spanish to the gendered grammar of Japanese. Where in English, genders affect a few pronouns and maybe a handful of words, other languages face a slew of logistical challenges that forced the decision for the company as it expanded internationally.
And another example: Twitter systems in Chinese count each Chinese character toward the 140-character limit. However, as most words in Chinese consist of one character each, the system essentially allows 140 words. That's not a "tweet"--that's an entire birdsong symphony. The literal meaning is there (140 characters), but the spirit (brevity) is not.
In New York City, special signs can be posted in neighborhoods where concentrations of language speakers exist. In the Internet world, these signs automatically adapt to the viewer's language, but language is much more than words---it's a world of function, context, visual cues and local conventions, especially in the conversation-driven atmosphere of the Web. Bringing all of this together raises all kinds of issues that I'm glad I don't have to deal with.
Read more about Facebook's hurdles with implementing Arabic.
Labels: chinese, citylife, culture, design, gender, internet, language, new york
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