In a world where communication is king, it is crucial to present a consistent and recognisable voice across every facet of your business. From marketing campaigns to technical documentation, the content you produce can build or erode your brand identity. This is where the style guide, an often overlooked yet incredibly powerful tool, comes into play.
What is A Style Guide?
A style guide is essentially a rulebook that outlines the verbal and visual language of a company. It sets out guidelines on everything from the tone of voice, grammatical conventions, typography, and colour scheme, to the use of specific phrases, jargon, and industry terminology. By providing clear and consistent guidelines, a style guide helps to shape your company’s identity and ensures that this identity is conveyed effectively across different mediums and departments.
For example, the marketing department in a software company may run a campaign advertising the user-friendly interface of their new product. The style guide ensures that the message is not just persuasive but consistent with the company’s branding. It guides the choice of words, the tone of the communication, and even the visuals that accompany the message.
On the other hand, the same software company’s technical writing team may need to create a manual for this new product. Here too, the style guide plays a crucial role. It ensures that the manual uses consistent terminology and clear, concise language that aligns with the brand’s voice and image.
Additionally, the style guide will ensure that all customer-facing departments – from customer service scripts to the CEO’s keynote speech – maintain the same language style and tone. This is critical in creating a unified brand image and providing a seamless customer experience.
But a style guide goes beyond just ensuring linguistic consistency. For design teams, it sets out guidelines for typography, logo usage, colour schemes, and other visual elements. This ensures that whether a customer is looking at your website, your product packaging, or your social media post, they’re experiencing a cohesive brand identity.
In essence, a style guide is not just a set of rules, but a comprehensive tool that breathes life into a brand’s identity. It provides a company with a unified voice, ensuring that no matter where or how a customer interacts with the business, they’re met with the same familiar, authentic, and consistent brand presence.
Considerations for a Language Style Guide
Developing a comprehensive language style guide is an art that requires a thorough understanding of both the source and target languages.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the essential elements that should be included in a style guide and illustrate them with examples for a more vivid understanding.
Linguistic Characteristics
Each language has its unique traits that require special consideration during translation. For instance, German is known for its long compound words such as ‘Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän’ (Captain of the Danube steamship company). The style guide should address how to handle such compound words while maintaining readability and comprehension in the target language.
Japanese, on the other hand, has various levels of politeness, from casual to humble and respectful forms. Translators need to know which level of politeness to use in different contexts. For instance, a formal business document may use the highly polite ‘masu’ form, while a casual blog post may use the informal ‘plain’ form.
Spanish differs widely depending on the region. The word ‘computer,’ for example, is ‘computadora’ in Mexico, ‘ordenador’ in Spain, and ‘computador’ in Colombia. A comprehensive style guide should address these regional differences, ensuring the translated content is region-specific.
Cultural Nuances
Translation is not a simple word-for-word process; it’s about transmitting meaning, intent, and emotions, which are heavily influenced by culture. For example, the English idiom “bite the bullet” doesn’t translate directly into other languages. In French, a comparable phrase would be “il faut faire avec” (one must deal with it). The style guide should offer directions on how to handle such idioms, metaphors, and culturally sensitive topics.
Terminology and Jargon
Particularly vital in technical translations, a glossary of industry-specific terms should be a part of the style guide. For instance, in IT translations, terms like ‘cloud computing,’ ‘big data,’ or ‘Internet of Things’ need to be translated accurately and consistently to avoid confusion.
Formatting and Layout
Different languages have different reading directions. Arabic and Hebrew read right to left, traditional Mongolian and Chinese can read top to bottom, and most Western languages read left to right. The length of translated text can also vary significantly from the source, with languages like German often requiring more space than English. Your style guide should outline how to adjust formatting and layout to accommodate these differences, ensuring the final product is not just accurate but also aesthetically pleasing and easy to read.
Tone of Voice
Regardless of the language, your brand’s tone of voice should remain consistent. If your brand voice is casual and playful in English, using formal language in a French translation could create a disconnect with your audience. The style guide should provide guidelines to maintain the same tone across all languages. For instance, if your brand uses a conversational tone, the French translation should avoid formal expressions and use more colloquial language like “C’est cool!” instead of the formal “C’est excellent!”
By addressing these considerations with clear examples, the style guide serves as a robust tool for the translator, ensuring accuracy, consistency, and cultural sensitivity in every project. This attention to detail results in translations that resonate with the target audience, providing the same quality of content as the source language.
Our Approach to Style Guides
At Bubbles, we treat each project with the meticulous attention it deserves, starting with an understanding of your customised style guide for every client – sometimes this is implicit in the source text or we’ll happily take any formal style guide documents you may have. This document and our output work are a collaborative effort, ensuring that your brand’s voice, message, and identity remain consistent and powerful across all languages.
In conclusion, a style guide is an invaluable tool that ensures brand consistency across all your communication channels, from marketing and technical documentation to customer service and leadership speeches. It reflects your brand’s unique voice and identity, making sure it shines through in every piece of content you produce, no matter the department.
If you’re looking for professional translation services that understand the importance of preserving your brand’s voice and style across multiple languages, look no further.
At Bubbles Translation Services, we’re experts in navigating linguistic nuances and cultural subtleties, ensuring your message not only translates accurately but also resonates with your target audience. Whether you’re launching a global marketing campaign or creating multilingual technical documents, our team is ready to assist. Don’t compromise your brand identity in the global market. Get in touch with us today to discuss your project and see how we can help you maintain a consistent, powerful, and authentic brand voice across all languages.
