Translating advertisement and marketing texts from English into German is particularly challenging. In about 90% of those types of texts, a literal translation would not work because the result is likely to sound stilted or not work for various reasons: For once, there is the ubiquitous German text expansion that would not match short English catch phrases. Also, a literal translation will likely not convey the nuances of the intended message or innuendos and cultural references. And finally, English advertisements often address the reader directly as in “Think different!” or “More Power to You,” which is impossible to re-create in German without deciding on how we can achieve this, given that there is the formal (polite) form Sieand the informal (colloquial) form du. In recent years, the informal way has become more popular. But the polite form is generally still used when the ad is intended for a wider audience (e.g. all age-groups).
Because of all these factors, when we translate advertisement or marketing texts, we have to put on our thinking cap and carefully craft a translation we call transcreation, which involves a good amount of copy-editing instead of simply translating. This process is quite time-consuming and often consists of several rounds of translation (including back-translation), editing, and review.
Needless to say, German translations of marketing and advertisement texts should only be handled by experienced professional translators, who will do their best to educate the client and explain possible options.