Indirect translation in advertising: the case of Estrella Damm

ABSTRACTThe Catalan brand Estrella Damm (a beer produced in Barcelona) is very popular for its summer advertisements. The ‘Mediterràniament’ commercials (2009–2021) reinforce the Mediterranean culture through its people, gastronomy and landscape. Estrella Damm commercials are produced in Catalan and Spanish, and some are produced in Catalan, then translated into Spanish, and finally subtitled in English, since Estrella beer is sold internationally. This paper examines how indirect translation (Catalan, Spanish, English) has been used in Estrella Damm ‘Mediterràniament’ advertising campaign through textual analysis of commercials and through interviews to the translators who created the Estrella Damm international versions from mediating texts. In indirect translation involving related languages, each version can affect one another: creative options for one text in Catalan can be adopted in the Spanish version, which may also influence the final English version. Therefore, translation for advertising in bilingual contexts contributes to visibilizing mediating languages and versions.KEYWORDS: Advertising translationaudiovisual translationindirect translationminority languageslow-diffusion languagessubtitling AcknowledgementsWe would like to thank Oriol Villar, Sandra Villar, Teresa Sàrries, Tony Gray.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationNotes on contributorsMontse CorriusMontse Corrius, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer at the Universitat de Vic – Universitat Central de Catalunya (UVic-UCC) where she teaches English for specific purposes at undergraduate level and audiovisual translation at postgraduate level. She is member of the research group TRACTE (Audiovisual Translation, Communication and Place; SGR 2021, 814 GRC) where she leads the line of research on Audiovisual translation. Her main research interests include audiovisual translation (with a special focus on multilingual texts, advertising, gender and accessibility). She has lectured on these areas of research and published several articles in prestigious international journals such as Target, The Interpreter and Translator Trainer, Perspectives: Studies in Translatology, Bulletin Hispanique, ELT Journal, among others. She was one of the main researchers of the funded project TRAFILM, on the translation of multilingual films in Spain (trafilm.net – FFI2014-55952-P), and one of the researchers of the MUFiTAVi Project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Finance and Competitiveness (PGC2018-099823-B-I00).Eva EspasaEva Espasa, PhD, is a Professor at Universitat de Vic-Universitat Central de Catalunya (UVic-UCC), where she teaches audiovisual translation and translation for advertising at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Her main research interests are audiovisual translation and accessibility, theatre translation and gender studies, topics on which she has lectured and published extensively, in journals such as The Translator, The Interpreter and Translator Trainer, Trans and international publishers such as Routledge, John Benjamins or Saint Jerome. Espasa is coordinator of the research group TRACTE (Audiovisual Translation, Communication and Place, SGR 2021, 814 GRC). She was one of the main researchers of the funded TRAFILM research project (FFI2014-55952-P), on the translation of multilingual films, and one of the researchers of the MUFiTAVi Project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Finance and Competitiveness (PGC2018-099823-B-I00).