Dutch consumers' perceived translatability of English slogans and its effect on comprehensibility and attitude towards the slogan.

Abstract

This paper reports a research investigating the effect of translatability on the comprehensibility of a slogan and if this affects Dutch consumers’ attitude towards the slogan. In the experiment, 105 native Dutch speakers were shown either translatable or non- translatable slogans and were asked questions measuring their comprehensibility and attitude towards the slogans through an online questionnaire. The main results found that translatable slogans were comprehended significantly better than non-translatable slogans. A remarkable finding was that this comprehensibility did not affect the attitude participants had towards the slogan, which contradicted previous research. These findings indicate that there may be other factors influencing the attitude towards a slogan more than translatability, such as length. The insights gained through this study can be used in the creation of new slogans by companies as they suggest that using a non-translatable world does not necessarily lead to negative evaluations by Dutch consumers.