As a Canadian agency, at Acart Communications we’re used to doing things bilingually. So of course when we developed our Ready to Vote campaign for Elections Canada, our anglophone and francophone copywriters developed all messaging in parallel.
But in addition to English and French versions of our ads, we also created an Inuktitut language series (with additional help from the incomparable Elisapie Isaac) to speak to people in the north:
And then we had to adapt our message to reach large communities of New Canadians who speak non-official languages at home. Working with multicultural marketing partners, we developed 31 “ethnic language” versions for print, TV, radio, and online.
Anyone who speaks multiple languages can appreciate the challenge of adapting scripts written in two European languages into languages that bear no historical relation to the Indo-European family. But even languages of closer relation present challenges, because we had to make all versions fit into the same 30-second TV or radio time slot.
Are you ready for a trip through Canada’s rich multicultural landscape? Here is our Voter Registration TV ad in 22 different languages. Let’s go!
They say learning multiple languages makes you smarter.
Is there a genius out there who can name every one of the languages above, in order?
You can leave your answers on our Facebook page.
[Update: A sharp-eyed (and -eared) anonymous reader not only correctly identified all 21, but pointed out that there were only 21 non-official language videos embedded and asked why there was no Arabic. It was a simple oversight, which has now been corrected. Thanks!]