French term
s'illustrer
I am translating the slogan of a personal website related to my artistic activities as a hand lettering artist and illustrator.
In French I have "Du lettrage pour vous illustrer" which keeps the 2 keywords of the activity (lettrage & illustration) and plays with the idea of "illustrer" and s'illustrer".
In English, I can't find something satisfying and that's why I am asking for your help!
I thought of "(Hand) Lettering to illustrate your success" / "Illustrate your success with lettering" / "Letter your way to success" but we lose the effect of "s'illustrer".
Furthermore, if I can avoid to include this idea of "success" in order to stay more general it would be even better.
I would be extra grateful if you could help me with this :)
If you want to have more context, the website is the following: www.onirographica.com
| 4 +7 | To showcase |
Nicolas Gambardella
|
| 4 +1 | Your message hand-lettered and illustrated |
Yvonne Gallagher
|
| 3 | Depicts/describes |
Louise TAYLOR
|
| 1 | make a name for yourself |
Tony M
|
Jun 3, 2019 09:44: writeaway changed "Field" from "Art/Literary" to "Marketing"
Jun 3, 2019 17:11: Yolanda Broad changed "Term asked" from "s\\\'illustrer" to "s\'illustrer "
Non-PRO (2): GILLES MEUNIER, Yvonne Gallagher
When entering new questions, KudoZ askers are given an opportunity* to classify the difficulty of their questions as 'easy' or 'pro'. If you feel a question marked 'easy' should actually be marked 'pro', and if you have earned more than 20 KudoZ points, you can click the "Vote PRO" button to recommend that change.
How to tell the difference between "easy" and "pro" questions:
An easy question is one that any bilingual person would be able to answer correctly. (Or in the case of monolingual questions, an easy question is one that any native speaker of the language would be able to answer correctly.)
A pro question is anything else... in other words, any question that requires knowledge or skills that are specialized (even slightly).
Another way to think of the difficulty levels is this: an easy question is one that deals with everyday conversation. A pro question is anything else.
When deciding between easy and pro, err on the side of pro. Most questions will be pro.
* Note: non-member askers are not given the option of entering 'pro' questions; the only way for their questions to be classified as 'pro' is for a ProZ.com member or members to re-classify it.
Proposed translations
United Kingdom
Going the extra mile for premium results
Native in: French (Variants: Swiss, Belgian, Standard-France, Luxembourgish, Canadian) 
Works in: English to French, French to English
To showcase
Lettering to Showcase
or
Lettering for Showcasing
| <p>Thank you all!</p> <p>@Nicolas, isn't "to showcase" a transitive verb?</p><p>@AllegroTrans, I like your suggestion indeed. I would use it as "showcase your success with lettering" in this case because without, I feel we are pretty far from the actual activity.</p><p>@writeaway, I wouldn't do it either! |
| Thank you all @Nicolas, isn't "to showcase" a transitive verb?@AllegroTrans, I like your suggestion indeed. I would use it as "showcase your success with lettering" in this case because without, I feel we are pretty far from the actual activity.@writeaway, I wouldn't do it either! |
| agree |
writeaway
: marketing into a foreign language is tricky. I would never take on a marketing job into one of my source languages
46 mins
|
| agree |
AllegroTrans
: "showcase your success" would have the "ring" the asker is looking for
1 hr
|
| agree |
GILLES MEUNIER
: Traduction intelligente...
4 hrs
|
| agree |
Eliza Hall
4 hrs
|
| agree |
Conor Jarrett
: Showcase your success
6 hrs
|
| agree |
tradu-grace
: smart option!
6 hrs
|
| agree |
Louise TAYLOR
: Yes, showcase is a great word. I like 'lettering for showcasing'. Leave out the word 'success' it is not stated or implied in this heading.
1 day 11 mins
|
Depicts/describes
These might not be the best words. I think the general meaning is that the font shows the personality of the user, describes in some way who they are. I can't see it having anything to do with success.
| Thank you Louise! I agree with you about "success", it was just for lack of something better. I like "depicting" too. In this case though, it sounds to me like if I wanted to translate the original meaning too hard. Maybe it's better to write something either completely different, or to lose the wordplay. |
make a name for yourself
I think it all rather depends on what sort of 'lettering this is — do you mean sign-writing, logos... ? What sort of other places would your lettering be used?
| Hello Tony and thank you! I would definitely chose this one if I was focusing on logo design. I had in fact something similar with "put letters after your name" but discarded it for the same reason. For now, I'm focusing on lettering on chalkboards, shop windows, murals and things like restaurant menus etc. Very few logo designs. In the future, I plan to do more digital products with lettering. |
Ireland
right word, right place. everytime
Native in: English (Variants: US, Canadian, Irish, UK)
Works in: French to English, Spanish to English, English, and 1 more.
Your message hand-lettered and illustrated
illustrating & lettering your message
... if you want something close to what the French slogan intends. Though it doesn't keep the wordplay it does say what you actually DO which is important I think.
Or a bit further away
Your message artistically/creatively illustrated
--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 2 hrs (2019-06-03 11:20:08 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------
BTW I agree with Philipppa and Helene as well about "standing out". So, in the examples above you could follow with "to make it stand out" or even to "showcase it" but I think if using "showcase" you need to be clear WHAT is being showcased...
I see this site https://www.thescribblist.com/ just uses "Lettering and Illustration"
--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 4 hrs (2019-06-03 12:52:05 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------
Yes, SEO is important so you should really keep the words that actually describe what you do in the main heading or logo. You can always be more creative in sub-headings and further descriptions of what you offer the client...
| Hello Yvonne, thank you for your reply. I agree with the "showcase"comment, I was asking myself the same question. Of course, "lettering and illustration" is the most commonly used in this field, but I'd prefer to be slightly different than to fit in. On the other hand, it is sometimes better to keep things simple instead of trying too hard to be original! And as suggested by Philippa, this would allow to have good SEO. |
| agree |
AllegroTrans
: showcase your hand-lettering and illustration
1 day 14 hrs
|
|
thanks but it's the client's message that needs to be hand-lettered/illustrated
|
Discussion
<p>I had thought of other expressions, getting rid of "illustrate" but playing with "draw" (as the definition of hand lettering is "drawing letters" AND it relates to illustration). There was :</p>
<ul>
<li>Let your message/communication/voice be a big draw;</li>
<li>Sharpen your message/communication/voice, draw a crowd;</li>
<li>Draw your message/communication/voice in big letters;</li>
<li>Draw attention with hand lettering.</li></ul>
<p>If none of this works, I might as well keep "stand-out lettering and illustrations". I prefer to lose the wordplay and have something clear than to write something awkward ;)</p>
<p>Thanks again!</p>
And might there be a question of search engine indexing/optimisation that gives extra weight to the words you use at the top of your site ? (I've no idea, not having my own site, so could be barking up totally the wrong SEO tree!)