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Dutch to English translations [PRO] Manufacturing / Marketing - Meat packaging
Dutch term or phrase:Sfeeretiket
sfeeretiketten, prijslabels en actiestickers op de verpakking. In this case is is a label on pre-packed meat.
It is really about shelf presentation. A sfeeretiket has images and/or text to tempt the customer to buy the product as opposed to purely informative labels: price labels or special offer labels.
Please not that www.vonkvleeswaren.nl translates 'sfeeretiket' as 'atmosphere label', which I think is wrong. If you look at the picture, they mean 'prime label', or 'primary label'.
I think you have it there, Barend. The difference (or a substantial part of it) is socio-cultural: the Dutch marketer typically makes no bones about wanting to appeal to the customer (and why should he feel any need to pretend otherwise, really?), and uses transparent terms to describe this in both internal planning and in press releases, etc.; the Anglophone marketer uses (at best) circumlocutions in internal planning, and deliberately (but often not being very aware of this deliberateness) nothing at all of this type in public-facing texts.
The first time I came across ‘storytelling’ was as an English borrowing in a Dutch sentence by an industry umbrella organization advising its members to use this technique to explain (subconsciously) to potential customers why there was a price premium on certain products. (For that client, I left it of course as ‘storytelling’ in the English translation of the advice.) But as soon as I saw it, I thought, ‘This will be one of those terms that a Dutch professional read in the Anglophone trade press for his industry as a behind-the-scenes description of a technique, but he’s using it as an English borrowing in Dutch rather more openly.’
Other examples of perhaps untranslatable compounds
14:11 Sep 14, 2012
maaltijdsoep —> normally just ‘soup’ (or fleshed out with a descriptive phrase if the point has to be made) kwaliteitswinkel —> normally just ‘shop/store’ if the company is describing its own premises (to avoid blowing its own trumpet) momentthee, genietthee —> normally just ‘tea’ (in English, the seller isn’t ‘supposed’ to specify this consideration)
This seems to be a phenomenon especially with marketing/PR terminology and/or the intended uses of products (especially physical objects?). The common thread appears to be that there is an element of emotional intent/effect in the descriptions compounded with the nouns. At the risk of sounding unscientific or stereotypical, these are in my experience areas of life/marketing where the Dutch speaker has no hang-ups about confessing/categorizing the emotional intent/effect of the product in instances where English speakers (of whatever jurisdiction or culture) see no need to be so frank or often have been formed such as to expect to leave such considerations implicit. Desirable degree of implicitness/explicitness is, in my experience, one of the fundamental axes to consider in Dutch->English translation/life.
If I understand you correctly, you state 'prime label' is not an exact equivalent.
I think that expressions like 'main identification' and especially 'image identification' in combination with the examples I have seen comes close to what 'sfeeretiket' and its examples try to convey
What they are trying to do by these images is evoking a world that they think appeals to the customer.
So it is perhaps not a perfect equivalent but it seems it is something of an equivalent.
Barend, you have elicited my thoughts better than I could express them. Yes, that distinction is what I was wanting to make (or, to back-translate it, it would be “… and what some people might call an ‘atmospheric label / sfeervol etiket’ ” [deliberately using the adjective in my Dutch back-translation, perhaps unnaturally, to underline that there is in my view a substantial difference in intended meaning]).
In the time I’ve been a Dutch->English translator, one of the most striking and recurrent impressions I’ve gained is that the linguistic furniture of the Dutch speaker’s mind trains him to think in categories that are often more specific (or specific in different ways/instances) than the English speaker. Drawing on how you put it, the issue is with terms where a compound-X is considered to be a certain (and understood/agreed by people in general to be a certain) type of X. I can’t recall many lucid examples off the top of my head but I think you and other translators in the combination will recognize what I’m driving at. And yes, absolutely, understanding each other is the crucial thing and I think we do now. Best regards.
I'll first respond to Alexander, then I will respond to Michael.
Alexander, the most important thing is that we try to understand each other.
Again, thank you for responding and considering my points.
If I understand what you mean, you want to make a distinction between types of labels, which may be classified in several categories, one of which is 'sfeeretiket', and what some people might call an 'atmospheric label/sfeeretiket'
I agree with your notion that 'sfeeretiket' in Dutch is considered to be a certain type of label.
The implicit question you really ask is then, I think, is there an English equivalent for the type of label that is called a 'sfeeretiket' in Dutch.
Is that right?
If there is an equivalent then this equivalent would be the right answer.
If there is not, then we might have more freedom of translation.
I'm not saying that the Dutch term 'sfeeretiket' is wrong, just that, if it can indeed be equated with 'prime label', the fact that it has 'sfeer' in it would seem to limit it somewhat compared to its English counterpart.
When I read sth like: 'Prime or primary labels are designed to be the main identification on a product or package. They carry the product's brand name or image identification that will attact attention on the retail shelves and appeal to prospective buyers.' (http://www.americanlabel.net/www/docs/127 ), it makes me think that there is more to such a label than just 'sfeer'. That's why I am wondering if there is another Dutch term that we are perhaps missing here, which is a better translation of 'prime label'. That is also why I mentioned above that the Dutch and Germans seem to sometimes use the English term instead – perhaps for the very same reason I just outlined here.
I had another look and think, and I accept your points (A), (B) and (C). I am fairly new to ProZ and perhaps underestimated how negative/rare it is to disagree with a translation entry. Is there any way of undoing it? The main point/feeling I was trying to communicate, rather difficult to express, is essentially that the notion of categorizing this type of label as a distinct class (sfeeretiket) is something found in a much more developed way in Dutch than in English, making a natural translation of it tricky — and also that when (including on the pages you cite, which are, as you say, good English) the collocation ‘atmospheric label’ occurs, the construction/context to me strongly implies ‘a label whose images make it evocative to the beholder/commentator’ rather than ‘a label consciously designed to belong to the category equivalent to what in Dutch is called a sfeeretiket’, if you see what I mean. I also see I marked my comment on ‘storytelling label’ as ‘agree’ whereas it should have been ‘neutral’.
You say: The connotations of ‘atmosphere(/-ic)’ in English are to do with feelings aroused by sounds, words, tones of voice, moods, etc
I would say: the connotations of ‘atmosphere(/-ic)’ in English are to do with feelings/moods aroused by sounds, words, tones of voice, images, etc
I want to make three points:
A) I would like to ask you to have a look at the labels (I am surprised that you omitted images from your list) that you can see in the references that I offered. Don't you think these images are connected with certain feelings/moods?
B) Don't you agree that the English in the references I offered is good English? And therefore that native speakers of English (even experts) opted for an expression like 'atmospheric label'?
C) Don't you agree that 'disagree' is an exaggeratedly negative judgement? I don't ask you to opt for my suggestion (as might be clear from my previous entries) but I do think 'disagree' is not fair and not right?
I would like to mention, as far as I know this is not a backtranslation but just NL-EN
I absolutely agree that nouns can become adjectives and vice versa in translation between Dutch and English or other languages. I’m not seeking to quibble with the use of ‘atmospheric’ versus ‘atmosphere’ in the translation of this term, but rather with the lexical item ‘atmosphere(/-ic)’ in collocation with a label. The connotations of ‘atmosphere(/-ic)’ in English are to do with feelings aroused by sounds, words, tones of voice, moods, etc. — not (even in the case of ‘atmospheric lighting’, which is of course a standard collocation: here, too, it is about mood) to do with feelings provoked by actual objects that are seen. It is precisely because Dutch and English lexical items don’t overlap precisely that I would caution against using any form of the word ‘atmosphere’ as a back-translation of ‘sfeer-’ associated with physical objects such as a label.
This is what I mean. Again a website that has been translated and now from Dutch to English and what happens?
'sfeeretiket' has been translated as 'atmosphere label' the noun 'atmosfeer' has been translated as a noun 'atmosphere'. A 'copy' translation simply following the Dutch syntax and Dutch word structure, which, as any translator knows, in most cases results in bad English.
If you want to use 'atmosphere' you should certainly use the adjective 'atmospheric' as in 'atmospheric music' and as in my examples, which originate, I think, from sound English.
And don't you agree that comparing the English version and the Dutch version of the same website doesn't really prove much?
I would also like to point out that the Dutch word 'sfeeretiket' definitely is not a wrong word. They choose to call it like this, it does make sense and it is sound Dutch. So it not true they use the wrong term or something.
I don't understand your argument. As you might understand, English is a language different from Dutch and where a noun is used in English an adjective may be used in Dutch and the other way round. This happens all the time.
I also gave this example from van Dale:
van Dale
sfeermuziek - atmospheric music
so if you want to disagree you should come up with other arguments
I am definitely not going to do that My suggestion was "atmospheric label" and I tried to justify it.
However, I can see that 'prime label' may apply and certainly seems to be more common
There are two reasons why I think the asker should give you the points
1) it may well be that jads found 'prime label' through your suggestions as regards the various variants containing 'custom' 2) I believe 'prime label' and 'custom-designed label' etc. are closely related terms
I think what is bothering me is not so much the English term, but the Dutch term. And more specifically, that 'sfeeretiket' doesn't seem to cover the entire meaning of 'prime label', which leads me to wonder if there is another (better?) Dutch term for this label...
'Bio+ vleesartikelen worden met grote regelmaat voorzien van een booklet dat tijdens de actieperiode het normale sfeeretiket vervangt.'
If a 'sfeeretiket' is in fact a 'prime/primary label', what would it mean to say that a booklet can replace it? This doesn't make sense to me, and therefore leads me to believe that a 'sfeeretiket' is in fact just some sort of extra sticker or label with an eye-catching image or logo or some such thing.
I also noticed that you changed 'prime' into 'primary', or at least make it appear as if there could be no differences in meaning between the two words
Well, Michael if you wanted to show that 'primary label' is an option in DUTCH, then I don't think you should come up with the website of the company that specializes in them: the translator of the website most likely just wasn't able to come up with a good translation
try site nl and you find no or almost no hits so I don't think this argument of yours is valid
why I think 'prime label' is an option is because of the definition and because of the examples
as far as the context is concerned, I found that the term 'sfeeretiket' is only sparsely used in Dutch and this should be the context concerned, where you will also find a few examples:
We would need more context in order to be able to determine what your author actually means by 'sfeeretiket'. To me, 'sfeer' seems to be only ONE ELEMENT of what a prime/primary label is/does. That is, the 'sfeer' would relate to the aspect of catching the eye of the consumer. True, a 'primary label' is meant to do this, HOWEVER, it is also actually the main source of brand information too, which has very little to do with 'sfeer.'
'Prime or primary labels are designed to be the main identification on a product or package. They carry the product's brand name or image identification that will attact attention on the retail shelves and appeal to prospective buyers.' [see also the various examples of 'primary labels' on this page; do they look like your 'sfeeretiketten'](http://www.americanlabel.net/www/docs/127 )
Could it be that your author is actually using 'SFEERetiket' as synonymous with 'SIERetiket'...?
I don't think that a 'sfeeretiket' is a 'primary label'. I think that many Dutch (and German) companies would simply use the English word 'primary label' if that is what they were talking about. See e.g.:
• DUTCH: 'Met deze systemen is de automatische etikettering mogelijk van de meest verscheidene producten in grote reeksen. Van afmetingen van 7 x 8 mm tot 300 x 1.000 mm zijn er veelsoortige verkoops- en sieretiketten of **primary labels** realiseerbaar in ieder etikettenformaat. Daardoor gebeurt er een precieze etikettering, zowel op ronde als op rechthoekige of conische producten.' (http://www.webermarking.nl/nl/producten/etiketteren/etikette... )
When I look at the labels of this reference of yours: http://www.webermarking.com/prime_labels.html, then I think 'prime labels' is a useful option (but I think my own suggestion is as well)
However, if you also look at what it says next to these labels then you see:
Make you brand stand out from the competition with a *custom-designed label*.
I mean, if you opt for 'prime label', I suggest you give Michael Beijer the points for this question.
A prime label is your product’s principal source of identification and decoration. It needs to not only inform, but also attract and entice the attention of your targeted user. In short, your label must create a shelf appeal that helps to sell your product.
An eye-catching prime label is the first thing that sets your product apart from all the others on crowded retail shelves. And the label plays a vital role in helping the consumer to decide to take that particular product home. Your product’s prime label functions as its principal source of identification and decoration. The label needs to not only inform, but also to attract and entice the attention of your targeted user. In short, your label must create an instant shelf appeal that sells your product to the consumer
Perhaps not specific enough, but 'special stickers/labels' might do.
Automatic update in 00:
Answers
50 mins confidence:
sfeeretiket
ambience label
Explanation: Have come across this term a few times in the past year and always been stumped by it, as it’s one of those Dutch compounds that can’t be rendered very convincingly without a circumlocution. ‘Cachet/feelgood label’ would sound corny, ‘quality/atmosphere label’ would sound like a label indicating a quality control finding. ‘Ambience label’ is what I have plumped for myself in the past.
Alexander C. Thomson Netherlands Local time: 15:51 Native speaker of: English, Scots
custom label/sticker; customised label/sticker; special label/sticker
Explanation: See my discussion entries. I can't really come up with anything that manages to maintain the 'sfeer' element, while not sounding wrong.
Maybe combine one of my suggestions with the phrase 'eye-catching'...
Example sentence(s):
In addition to standard labelling and tagging products, Austab Labels also manufactures special customised labels for its customers.
You can send us your artwork directly, and we can even help design logos for you too – we’ve got experts in house that can turn your ideas into eye-catching custom stickers and labels.
Michael Beijer United Kingdom Local time: 14:51 Works in field Native speaker of: English PRO pts in category: 26
Explanation: + picture (at the bottom of the page) / have a look
About the ”Vikingsild” label
The FINAT jury said the following about the label: ‘An * atmospheric label* showing the Vikings braving a tempestuous ocean. A very busy label with plenty of information about the product. Printed digitally on a metallised paper gives the label a quality lift without the expense of gold foiling.
We’re out of the holding pattern. I got the proofs of the label art a few days ago, and have tried to keep quiet, but I just couldn’t resist anymore, and had to share. Once again, design genius Daniel Bertolotto has worked his magic to produce this beautiful, *atmospheric label* for the new blend. Things are currently on track for release the week of 7 July, so, unless something goes terribly awry, it’ll only be a couple weeks before the new blend makes it to your favourite retailers. So, for all who have been asking, “When is it coming out? What’s taking so long?” at least the first question is now answered.
if you look at the labels on the site below they also represent a certain atmosphere
of course different atmospheres will be created for different products
Bio+ vleesartikelen worden met grote regelmaat voorzien van een booklet dat tijdens de actieperiode het normale sfeeretiket vervangt. Acties zijn vaak joint promotions met A-merken die goed passen bij Bio+ vleesproducten, gericht op CURA doelstellingen (Cross-selling, Upselling, Retentie en Aquisitie). Voorbeelden van deze acties zijn o.a., Weber BBQ actie, Cobb BBQ actie, BK pannenactie en de Gazelle zomeractie.
Please not that www.vonkvleeswaren.nl translates 'sfeeretiket' as 'atmosphere label', which I think is wrong. If you look at the picture, they mean 'prime label', or 'primary label'.
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