Wednesday, September 17, 2025

Starbucks gets lost in translation

I think there has been a case of lost-in-translation. Starbucks has a new ad, which is supposed to be full of hype, coolness, edginess, but honestly is just tacky. See the effort here. The ad goes as far as it could portraying anyone as being "original" and too indie to believe (seriously the ad could have been in Venice California, or somewhere where people are completely over the top and think of it as normal). 

The problem? The ad was certainly thought of in English. "Only the original understands the original". Which in Arabic missed the trick - because the way "original" was translated was "اصلي" - or "the one who started it" which is different from "new; fresh; inventive" which also means "original"... So basically, the Arabic was translated as opposed to transposed. Or at least wrongly translated.