Jump to content

The Southampton Football Club message.


aussiesaint20
 Share

Recommended Posts

Greetings from Oz :)

As some of you may already know, i'm working on a project to translate our wonderful club message into 25+ different languages. Not just translated, but translated exclusively by Saints fans around the world. The idea was to call on a global network of Saints fans and friends, to help spread the unique message of what Southampton Football Club stands for, as far and as wide as possible. The response has been brilliant so far and it has blown me away. Not one person asked has turned the request down :)

 

The message, pictured below, is now translated by Saints fans into the following languages (ordered by number of native speakers): Chinese (simplified), Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, Japanese, German, Indonesian, Vietnamese, French, Persian, Turkish, Italian, Chinese (traditional), Thai, Polish, Yoruba, Swahili, Dutch, Greek, Bulgarian, Finnish and Norwegian. If you want a copy of any of these, just let me know and I'll copy it in a post below. If you speak a language that isn't on this list, even better! Please let me know :)

 

Without going too much into the numbers side of things and the why, this takes our potential audience of native speakers up from around 360million people (6% of the world) to 3.1billion (42%). With almost every country in the world watching the Premier League in some capacity (broadcast in 212 countries and territories) that's a LOT of people looking for a team to follow. I know it's not a traditional look at football and football fans, but it's the reality of the current landscape. The less we put our name out there, the further we fall behind the "Big 6". With FFP it's even more important to spread the Southampton message globally.

 

Here's a few early examples of how popular the translated messages have proven:

Thai: An audience of over 175,000!

Bengali: Heaps of Saints love from Bangladesh..

Vietnamese: Over 4,000 video views

Portuguese The Charles Miller link lives on!

 

Thanks for listening and COYS!!

Trevor

ClubMessage to use GlobalSFC Original Image English.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Brilliant job Trevor.

 

I assume you're getting some form of acknowledgement from the club on this...?

 

Many thanks, The Saint.

 

I haven't sent any of these through to the club as yet - I wanted to get them all double and triple checked first before passing them on.

I will be featuring a translation a day in May, including a thank you and a picture of the Saints translator, on the Global Saints page. In regards to the acknowledgement, i'm not after any plaudits as such (I gave away all my Saints shirts on a recent South American trip), I just hope that those in positions of power at the Saints can realise how important this is to the future of the club. I want to see us remain competitive for years and decades to come, and with FFP in place we NEED to increase our global supporter base to do so. My hand is raised to help, getting a foot in the door is the hard part..

 

Over the last two years I've committed over 40 hours a week and thousands out of my own pocket, connecting and growing Southampton communities around the world, both online and offline. The current Premier League landscape we're in is completely different to what it was, even just a few short years ago: 861,000 fans (of the official SFC Facebook page) outside the U.K. compared to 35,000 at the start of the 2013/14 season, a 2360% increase!! A lot of clubs, including those outside the 'Big 6' are adapting accordingly. I've turned down attractive jobs in the industry (Social Media Management) to continue volunteering the work i've been doing for our fans around the world for as long as I can (just this year alone I've reached an audience of over 2.2million current and potential Saints fans). I'm putting my hand up to be our first ever 'Global Community Manager', but I can't exactly keep it up forever..I eventually have to eat

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Very good. When will it be translated into Strine?

 

An excellent question. I'm actually driving from Melbourne to Canberra this weekend, so I'll drop a couple of the posters off at a few country pubs along the way and put a cash prize up for the best 'Strine' translation.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Three more for your linguistic pleasure..

Bulgarian by Ilia Markov

Polish by Maciek Walczak

Yoruba by the one and only Tayo Adetoye!

For those big on social media and milestones, the Saints reached ONE MILLION Facebook 'fans' yesterday. Making us the 11th English Football Club to reach the figure. Interestingly 88.1% of the 1million are living outside the U.K. Up from 59.6% at the start of 2014.

 

Celebrating the efforts of our fans around the world:

1 million fans collage banners text added Facebook.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Three more fan translations. Not quite as geographically split this time.

Persian by Cameran Alavi

Turkish by Berdi Can

Greek by Lazaros Tatsopoulos

متشکرم, Teşekkür ederim and ευχαριστώ to Cameran, Berdi and Lazaros!

 

A special mention to our GREEK Saints who celebrated their 30th anniversary on Saturday.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]1660[/ATTACH]

Edited by aussiesaint20
Link to comment
Share on other sites

For all our lovers of French, Arabic and German language:

French by Anthony Lenhard

Arabic by Khaled Choubane

German by Franz Kögler

Merci beaucoup, شكرا جزيلا and Danke schön to Anthony, Khaled and Franz!

 

A special mention this time to our THAI Saints. They drove from all over Thailand last weekend to a city in the north-west of the country, Tak, to meet up with a Saints fan for her birthday.

Fair to say they picked a decent game for it. Loving their new banner as well!

วันนี้รวมตัวกันได้เยอะที่สุดที่เคยจัดกันมา

6-1เป็นอะไรที่สุดยอด

THAILAND Southampton Fans Villa H 1415.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For all our lovers of French, Arabic and German language:

French by Anthony Lenhard

Arabic by Khaled Choubane

German by Franz Kögler

Merci beaucoup, شكرا جزيلا and Danke schön to Anthony, Khaled and Franz!

 

A special mention this time to our THAI Saints. They drove from all over Thailand last weekend to a city in the north-west of the country, Tak, to meet up with a Saints fan for her birthday.

Fair to say they picked a decent game for it. Loving their new banner as well!

วันนี้รวมตัวกันได้เยอะที่สุดที่เคยจัดกันมา

6-1เป็นอะไรที่สุดยอด

[ATTACH=CONFIG]1679[/ATTACH]

 

wicked!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I do hope you are using trustworthy people, wouldn't like a Skate to translate it for us!!!,,

 

Not a Skate in sight!

I've built friendships with Saints fans all over the world since the early days of social media and they've all been nice enough to spare their time to translate the club's message.

Was only planning to do 24 in the lead up to our final game throughout May, but have been sent even more than expected. All translations have been double-checked, usually by another Saints fan as well.

Still waiting for someone to volunteer a Skate version of ours, any takers?

I'll get the ball rolling..

"We are the Skates

We don't just buy success, we steal it

We take heaps of shortcuts and never earn it"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A little different today. FOUR translations and a bonus video. Must be your lucky linguistic day SW..

Dutch by Mattijs van Egdom

Simplified Chinese by Alex Li

Norwegian by Mari-ann Mehus and Odd Knoff

Italian by Alessio Lanave

Dankjewel, 谢谢, Tusen takk and Grazie mille Mattijs, Alex, Mari-ann, Odd and Alessio!

 

During the 2012-13 season, a Nigerian by the name of Tayo Adetoye started following and engaging with our Aussie Saints group. Over recent years he's formed a very dedicated group of Southampton fans in a not-so-well off suburb in Lagos. Tayo's obvious passion for the Saints was soon noticed by fans in Southampton who decided to send Tayo and his group various Saints items. Here's the aforementioned video to tell the rest of the story: The Nigerian Saints!

Nigeria Tayos reaction to shirts.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A little different today. FOUR translations and a bonus video. Must be your lucky linguistic day SW..

Dutch by Mattijs van Egdom

Simplified Chinese by Alex Li

Norwegian by Mari-ann Mehus and Odd Knoff

Italian by Alessio Lanave

Dankjewel, 谢谢, Tusen takk and Grazie mille Mattijs, Alex, Mari-ann, Odd and Alessio!

 

During the 2012-13 season, a Nigerian by the name of Tayo Adetoye started following and engaging with our Aussie Saints group. Over recent years he's formed a very dedicated group of Southampton fans in a not-so-well off suburb in Lagos. Tayo's obvious passion for the Saints was soon noticed by fans in Southampton who decided to send Tayo and his group various Saints items. Here's the aforementioned video to tell the rest of the story: The Nigerian Saints!

[ATTACH=CONFIG]1684[/ATTACH]

 

I recently email the club about getting in on the Chinese social media action by opening official accounts with Weibo and the like. Even Sunderland have 45,000 (ish) followers, and Aston Villa around 325,000. Spurs have over a million. We're the only top seven team not to have an online presence in China. There are several unofficial ones, including my own and a much more widely followed one by a girl called Zoe who I think studied in Southampton. She has around 5,000 followers. I think now is the time to be making the push, because our profile has never been higher in the PL era. The club got back to me pretty quick to say they would look at my proposal before next season. We'll see what happens.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I recently email the club about getting in on the Chinese social media action by opening official accounts with Weibo and the like. Even Sunderland have 45,000 (ish) followers, and Aston Villa around 325,000. Spurs have over a million. We're the only top seven team not to have an online presence in China. There are several unofficial ones, including my own and a much more widely followed one by a girl called Zoe who I think studied in Southampton. She has around 5,000 followers. I think now is the time to be making the push, because our profile has never been higher in the PL era. The club got back to me pretty quick to say they would look at my proposal before next season. We'll see what happens.

 

The writing is well and truly on the wall. Within 5-10 years all Premier League clubs will be on Weibo, guaranteed. Because of FFP, the long-term Premier League performance and longevity of clubs will be heavily related to how well they embrace and capitalise on their overseas markets, especially China. The % of people outside the U.K who are 'fans' of the Official Southampton FB page is now more than 88%. Clubs like Aston Villa, Crystal Palace, Everton and West Brom are already making moves to connect and grow their overseas fan base..

 

Interestingly I read that 30% of football fans in China are women. That's MILES above the % in most other countries. Can't hurt with the handsome lot we currently have! The other interesting figure related to what you're saying, is that just as many people follow a (official) Premier League club account on Weibo than the amount who follow a PL club on Twitter: Weibo v Twitter. I've just sent you a reply on Weibo. I've been using recently to make sure i'm familiar with it's operation and to engage with our Saints family in China. Zoe actually helped out with the Chinese translation on the above link! She's co-admin of the page with another guy and it seems quite popular and has regular content, but it certainly needs a new logo!

Trevor

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A super six of Southampton translations for your reading and viewing pleasure:

Finnish by Kimmo Hantikainen

Swedish by Mickael Svensson

Swahili by Brian Musyami

Hindi by Abhimanyu Karandikar

Traditional Chinese by Wong Kitson

Korean by Eunsang Lee

Kiitos paljon, Tack så mycket, Asante sana, Bahut shukriya, 非常感謝 and 감사합니다 Kimmo, Mickael, Brian, Abhimanyu, Wong and Eunsang!

 

As a bonus feature today I'll thrown in SFCUSA: The Movie

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

[uPDATE] I've finally got around to combining these with the club's video. The first cab off the rank is the Korean version.

It's proving pretty popular with the locals going off the comments and has been viewed over 7,000 times already.

 

Social Media is a great equaliser for a club like ours. It gives us a platform to showcase our unique principles rather than our usual mainstream media coverage, which is a mix of nothing or rehashed transfer rumours. It's not that surprising that the message is proving popular in Korea, having learnt the language at school I know just how much they value working hard to achieve success and being part of a close family/community.

우리들은 사우샘프턴이다

We March On.

 

The other version I've done so far is the Portuguese translation and unsurprisingly, the Brazilians absolutely love it. The unique connection between Southampton and Brazil is fairly well known and a lot of the locals are massive Saints fans.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Afternoon Aussiesaint, Been to Brazil a few times with work and always get a good reception from the locals about saints when I talk football with them. Keep up the good work.

And I agree with you the Chinese market is a big untouched opportunity for us.

 

Sevvy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

HI, I don´t post much anymore! prefer just to watch! But I stumbled across this thread and think it is fantastic work you are doing!

A little bit about myself..... I was born and raised in Southampton and all my family still live there! I have lived in Spain for 10 years and have recently moved to Malaga!

My girlfriend is Colombian and she sends clothes to her family once per year! I have already put aside some of my saints shirts to send to them and my two step-sons are already wearing some others even though they are miles too big! The youngest one (6 years old) is a big malaga fan and now is a mad Saints fan because of me and because we bought Juanmi! Just wanted to share this info and say that if you need any help with Spanish or help in Spain or help in Colombia I am only too happy to help!!

 

Keep up the good work. and there are other people out there who would help too, you just need to ask!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...