(No) Translation as an Advertising Strategy: What Slips Through the Cracks of the Language with the (Ab)use of the "Lingua Franca"?

Abstract

In the 21^st century capitalist and consumerist society, advertising can be found everywhere and has become an indispensable tool for every company to succeed in the markets. In this globalized world, advertising has transcended borders and needs translation for achieving its desired effects in every market. Recently, we have noticed in Spain an important change with regard to translation strategies in many television commercials of leading international firms. We have called this increasingly common strategy ‘(no) translation’, since it consists of subtitling the message while the audio is kept in English. In this article we will try to demonstrate that this (no) translation strategy is not neutral, but rather, it intends to use the ‘symbolic capital’ of English in order to captivate the audience.