Sunday, April 16, 2017

Johnnie Walker flunks in Arabic very badly

There is no way to sugarcoat this - the Arabic version of the new Johnnie Walker campaign (see here and here) "the resourceful don't wait" is very, very lame. First, the word "resourceful" does not have an Arabic equivalent, which made whomever came up with this to translate it (because this is pure translation not transposition) into "ashab el 7al" (those who have solutions which could be the most boring way to put that word into Arabic). As I said, since this is a barely passable translation, whomever did it should have transposed. Example: Using the Arabic idiom "al sabr mouftah al faraj" (patience is the key to solutions) into "al sabr laysa mouftah al faraj" (patience is not a key to solutions - ergo move it and do something useful!) this would have brought a creative line which said the same thing as the English without it being a boring translation.