Basque language and advertising - Jesus Eguzkiza

This article contains some reflections on the qualitative use of the Basque language in advertising. The author begins by highlighting the fact that at present the texts which appear in advertising are always translated from Basque and is not prepared directly in that language. Besides, as the wording in publicity is often based on plays on words and stylistic resources which only have meaning in a specific language –in our case, Spanish– the messages are not adequately expressed in Basque. The only solution, according to the writer of the article, would be to create advertising techniques capable of conceiving a different message in each language, each with their own linguistic logic and taking into account their own stylistic resources. But unfortunately, according to the author, sometimes even companies outside the Basque Country are commissioned to prepare advertising campaigns and use non Basque-speakers for the oral messages so that there are often obvious cases of incorrect pronunciation.

Apart from this type of publicity, used generally in the mass media, the article also covers other types of bilingual messages from public institutions which are also conceived in Spanish and which are translated into Basque. But in this case more people are involved in the process, and therefore it often happens that there are even spelling errors in the text in Basque. Nevertheless, the author of the article points out once more that many messages of this type are often incorrect due precisely to the fact that they are translations of phrases thought out in another language, which, in spite of being grammatically correct have no meaning in Basque. The only possible solution for this problem is also the direct creation of this type of caption or message in Basque, taking into account all the resources which are available in the Basque language, as well as the function which the messages created must have for those they are directed at, etc. In this way, the author concludes, it will not be necessary to speak Spanish to be able to understand texts written in Basque.