Translating call-to-action texts in localization from English into Bulgarian
Keywords:
call-to-action, software localization, website localization, digital genres, translation problemsAbstract
This paper focuses on the translation of call-to-action (CTA) texts in localization from English into Bulgarian, providing insights into the most commonly applied translation solutions, the linguistic and extralinguistic factors that affect these solutions, as well as into matters of conventionality in the CTA text type. To provide those insights an analysis of three websites of digital platforms that belong to the same domain (air travel) and that have been localized from English into Bulgarian is performed. All CTA texts from the English homepages of these three platforms are excerpted in parallel with their equivalents from the Bulgarian versions thereof with the aim of identifying potential conventions and patterns. When any inconsistent solutions are encountered, they are analysed within their superstructural context so as to determine the potential circumstances that have led to their use. The paper contributes to the study of translation problems in localization from English into Bulgarian, outlining issues related to one of the key text types in digital media. However, further research is needed on translation problems related to other text types within the digital genres in order to build a comprehensive picture of localization-specific translation problems in the English-to-Bulgarian language pair.
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