When an English title or heading is translated into other languages you may notice that most of the capital letters disappear. This isn’t a formatting error or translator oversight. Instead, it reflects the fact that English ‘title case’, the capitalisation of the first letter of ‘major’ words in a title or heading, is not a universal practice.
English has developed a distinctive habit of capitalising most of the important words in titles, headings and headlines. However other languages, including French, Italian and Spanish amongst others, would normally write titles and headings much like an ordinary sentence (sentence case), with a capital letter only at the start of the sentence and on any proper nouns.
Although norms vary between individual publishers and style guides, title case has become an established quirk of English orthography. It is so entrenched that we are sometimes asked by native English-speaking clients to ‘add the capital letters back in’ to their translated titles. However, this is rarely advisable.
In translation, formatting titles to accord with the conventions of the target language is an important part of the process. A title may be translated perfectly at the lexical level but will still look ‘wrong’ to native speakers if it retains the source language's capitalisation style.
The origins of English title case lie in the history of printing. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, English printers increasingly used capital letters to help titles stand out from the surrounding text. Over time, this convention became standardised and the principle was established that ‘major’ words are capitalised while ‘minor’ words are not. ‘Major’ words are nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, while ‘minor’ words are articles, conjunctions and short prepositions. These conventions explain why we write ‘The Curious Case of the Translated Titles and their Vanishing Capital Letters’ rather than ‘The Curious Case Of The Translated Titles And Their Vanishing Capital Letters’ or ‘The curious case of the translated titles and their vanishing capital letters’.
It’s an important reminder that translation and localisation involve more than ‘just’ translating words. We make sure your content is adapted, not just translated. Speak to our friendly team about your next translation project.
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