Why change translation text into a picture for international versions?
I was watching Inside Out (2015) in Spanish and noticed that all the signs that in the English version are in English, in the Spanish version are in Spanish. For example (sorry for potatoes):
This is something that has become normal, especially in animation movies (I guess because it is easier to change), to translate and internationalize signs to make it fit better in the different cultures where the movie is released.
But, there is a scene in the movie in which the translation didn't happen as with the other signs, and a different approach was used: when Riley is getting a phone call from her mother, in the English version we see the phone with the word "Mom":
But in the Spanish version (also in French, I don't know about other languages) we don't see the word Mamá (or Mère/Maman in French), and instead a picture of the mother is displayed as the contact information:
It seems inconsistent with the way the translations were done in the other scenes. What are the reasons why they would choose to change that in production?
Best Answer
Pixar expended tremendous effort to localize Inside Out for particular audiences, going so far as to re-animate whole scenes. For instance, in the American version, Riley hates broccoli, but in the Japanese version, she hates green peppers. According to director Pete Docter, "28 graphics across 45 different individual shots...were localised."
Clearly, Pixar, for this movie about what it's like inside a child's mind, wanted every child to be able to relate to Riley as much as possible. Localizing references and text serves this purpose, but replacing the word "Mom" with a picture of her mother accomplishes the goal even better. It "translates" to more countries than Pixar could possibly have time to localize. The picture is understandable even to audience members who can't read yet (a serious consideration for Pixar). Finally, it's cheaper than localizing text for so many countries.
Pictures about "Why change translation text into a picture for international versions?"
What do you think are the strategies one can use in translating a language to another?
What are the main techniques of translation?- Borrowing. Borrowing is where words or expressions are taken directly from the source text and carried over into the target language. ...
- Calque (loan translation) ...
- Literal Translation. ...
- Transposition. ...
- Modulation. ...
- Equivalence/Reformulation. ...
- Adaptation. ...
- Compensation.
Is a translation of a text a different text?
Translation is a text comprised of refractions and it manipulates messages to project a certain image in the service of certain ideological constraints.How can I identify a language from an image?
Looking to detect a language from an image? Yandex Translate's image translation tool makes this easy. Simply upload an image from your computer, or drag it onto the page, and the service will detect the language in the image. Like Google Translate, auto-detect should be enabled by default.Why is a translation generally longer than the original text?
If you have left no extra white space in your brochure, website or software, the translation has to be reviewed to match the space, which takes time and costs more. This is common when software and web pages have to be translated where extra space for translated text is limited.HOW TO : Extract TEXT from a PHOTO and TRANSLATE it - IMAGE TO TEXT CONVERT
Sources: Stack Exchange - This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Exchange and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Images: Brett Sayles, Brett Sayles, Brett Sayles, Laker