Twenty-first International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

This paper examines the intersection between Humanities and Economics by exploring how marketing criteria influence the translator’s linguistic choices for sale-oriented purposes. It takes the example of a marketing-analysis software for Amazon and Walmart, called Helium 10, and its keyword tool, Magnet, in order to investigate whether marketing analysis tools can be useful to refine the translations and at the same time can influence the process of translation. This research is situated at the intersection between Translation Studies and Marketing. The method used for this study is both quantitative and qualitative, combining the use of the Helium software to collect data regarding best-selling products, research volumes, and their upward or downward trends. A comparison of different examples from a series of translations from Italian to German assesses which choice is better for the enterprises and their commercial aims. The results suggest that the integration of marketing analysis tools is indeed useful for refining technical and commercial translations to increase the visibility of the translated keyword associated with a given product on e-commerce platforms making them more competitive with respect to other products of the same category, and, accordingly, fostering sales. This might lead to further studies reconsidering the creative role of the translator as well as the concept of equivalence between a source language and a target one based on a logic of economic profitability.