Segment 47 – Hug A Zombie  – Happy Halloween!

I received a text last week from the mother of my daughter’s friend, who wanted to invite my girl to a Halloween Party.  I asked my daughter whether or not she wanted to go to her friend’s house for Halloween, or would she stay and celebrate Halloween with me.  Most moms would expect that their 10 year old would want to go and celebrate Halloween with their friends – but not mine...

She told me that Halloween is an "American thing" and she’d already told her friends that she would celebrate this evil holiday with mummy dearest.  I chuckled maniacally… awesome evil mommy zombie has prevailed! Together we will scare the neighborhood kids… as zombies!

I do miss those days in Burlingame, walking through neighborhoods all decked out with zombies, ghost, goblins, and gore.  Practically every house on the street would be highly decorated and every kid, teenager and adult would join in on the fun. It was a wonderfully terrifying treat for all kids.  After a night of trick or treating, gorging on candy until your tummy ached, and then finishing with late night scary movies….it promised & delivered a completely thrilling and frightfully delightful evening. I couldn’t wait until my kids were finally old enough to scare the daylights out of them and their friends… all in the name of Halloween.  

Halloween in Spain, isn’t quite like what it is in Burlingame, or any American town, for that matter, but it’s all what you make of it, no?  So what if my house is the only one on the street with a skeleton freak on the door with a huge hairy spider on its shoulder. So what if we have five jack-o-lanterns and ghost babies, and freaky RIP signs, or zombies decorating the windows.  So what if random bloody arms are laying around the yard. Yeah, my kids are dressed as zombies and I’m a zombie mom, and we have a zombie hamster… it’s the only time a year that we can be scary and silly, and eat tons of candy [we’ll be visiting our zombie dentist next week, I’m sure].

So how does all of this relate to Localization and translations? Well, it really doesn’t relate much at all! I can’t even make it stretch! I could explain how Halloween has origins in Ireland and Celtic roots, etc... but I've already done that. I could explain how different countries celebrate Halloween and local merchants try to capitalize on the holiday… but many keep the holiday as an "American thing". It’s really not necessary to localize scary themes...the living dead, ghosts, and freaks are pretty much an understood concept everywhere.

Nope this doesn't relate much at all to localization, Halloween is just fun! 

Halloween is a simple well known concept where localization really isn't the important element. That’s a rare thing for me to say. People simply have fun with it...  

 Go out and hug a zombie this week

Happy Halloween!

… Stay tuned for the next Segment of HT Localization Presents Language Translations for Real Life Series, where we’ll continue … with more stuff.

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This article was written by Rachanee Thevenet, Co-Founder of HT Localization.  Rachanee is an Asian-American expat living in Spain with her family.  She loves all things international including food, art, literature, culture, languages and people.  She has years of professional product marketing expertise and global expansion experience.

HT Localization, LLC. is a worldwide translation & localization agency providing a full range of professional language translation services, including social media localization, marketing translations, website translations, software localization, eLearning materials, documentation translations, etc.  With locations in the US, Spain, France, Zambia & Thailand, and coverage across all languages and most industries, HT Localization is well positioned to provide around the globe services for all translation needs.  

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