Found in Translation

Chocolate s for Japane se Me n on Vale ntine ’s Day
Valentine’s Day in Japan was introduced by department store Morozoff Ltd. in 1936 and aimed
primarily at foreigners. By 1953, Morozoff began encouraging consumers to buy heart-shaped
chocolates. Candy companies soon began their own campaigns, but at one point a statement from a

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chocolate company executive was mistranslated, leading people to believe that women were
supposed to buy chocolate for men. Japan now has a separate holiday for women on March 14 , on
which men buy women white chocolates, jewelry, and lingerie. But on February 14 , it’s the women
in Japan who buy the chocolate.
XOXOXO
Of course, romantic love is not the only kind of love, nor is it the most
challenging to communicate. Have you ever stood, flipping open greeting
cards, one after another, in search of the perfect sentiment for a friend or loved
one, only to realize that an hour has passed and you haven’t found quite the
right one?
Things get even more complicated when special occasions cross cultures.
For example, the Hispanic concept of a fifteen-year-old girl’s birthday, a
quinceañera, celebrates not only fifteen years on the planet but a girl’s
transition into womanhood (it’s also called a fiesta de quince in some parts of
Latin America). In many ways, the quinceañera celebration has more in
common with a wedding than with a birthday party. It’s a very important
occasion, one that’s special enough to merit its own greeting card.
If you’re asking yourself where on earth to buy a quinceañera card, it may
be as easy as visiting your nearest shopping mall. Go into nearly any Hallmark
store in the United States, and you’ll find not only these cards, but many others
that are part of the Hallmark Sinceramente line, which is designed specifically
for Hispanic consumers. Hallmark has a long history of creating cards in other
languages, dating back to their first card in French for the Canadian market in
1931. By the 1940s, they were selling cards in Bohemian (what is known as the
Czech language today), French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Spanish,
and Swedish. Today, they sell cards in more than thirty languages in a hundred
countries around the globe, including bilingual cards for Hispanics in the
United States.
According to a 2010 report from the U.S. Census Bureau, Hispanics make
up 16 percent of the country’s population, or 50.5 million people, so the
demand for Spanish-language cards is immense.
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It probably comes as no
surprise that the top markets for the Hallmark Sinceramente cards are Puerto
Rico, Miami, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. What might surprise you
is that the masterminds who create the cards are based not in one of these
Hispanic hubs but at the Hallmark worldwide headquarters in Kansas City,
Missouri. And perhaps even more important, it’s where a small but specialized

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bilingual and bicultural team creates the concepts for the Sinceramente line.
The editorial team has developed more than two thousand cards for the line,
but it consists of just three people—Sergio Moreno, Mónica Delaorra, and
Erika Garces-Alarco.
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The work that goes into creating the cards is not
considered translation, but rather transcreation. With transcreation, the text is
not transferred from one language to another but re-created entirely. The
editorial team starts not with a source text to be translated but with a concept to
be conveyed. They might take a concept from one card or several. Using these
ideas, they will incorporate elements from different cards and sometimes
generate entirely new ones. In most cases, the transcreated cards bear little or
no resemblance to the original. For example, you might find a get-well card in
English that has the same image on the front as the transcreated card in
Spanish, but the message may say something completely different, and the
image has likely been modified as well.
However, in addition to transcreation, the Sinceramente team also does what
is known as back-translation—once they come up with the verses for the cards
in their target language, Spanish, they translate those expressions back into
English, so that consumers who don’t speak Spanish will be able to understand
what they are buying. These are back-translations in another sense, too—the
translations actually appear on the backs of the cards. “Just as much work goes
into making sure that the back-translation carries the spirit of the Spanish,”
Sergio explains. The team also notes that putting the translation on the back of
the card has an additional advantage—it directs people to look at the Hallmark
crown logo, helping, albeit subtly, to build brand loyalty over time. After all,
expressing your love for someone is serious business.