Reading in Reverse

By Wayne A. Conaway and Terri Morrison
© Copyright 2004-2006, All Rights Reserved

Many of us spend our entire lives surrounded by graphic symbols which flow in just one direction. All currently-used languages of European origin are read from left to right. Consequently, natives of societies using European languages tend to look at everything from left to right, following the flow of their text.

Unfortunately for Nike, not all the world reads from left to right. Modern Europe uses three major alphabets: the Latin alphabet, used in English, Spanish, French, German and most Western European languages; the Cyrillic alphabet, used in Russian, Serbian and Bulgarian; and the Greek alphabet. In all of these languages, words are written in horizontal lines from left to right. But that pattern is reversed just south of Europe. In Israel and the Arabic countries of the Middle East, Hebrew and Arabic scripts are written from right to left, the opposite of the way it is done in Europe and the Americas.

That is where Nike encountered problems. Nike marketed a series of basketball shoes (including the Air Melt, Air Grill, Air B-Que and Air Bakin' series) with a decoration intended to resemble fire. This graphic did look like flames when viewed left to right. But when viewed right to left (backwards to an English-speaker), the flames resembled the Arabic word for Allah. Nike is not the only footwear company to have made that error. Some years ago, the Thom McAn company had a similar problem. The resemblance of the Thom McAn signature logo to the word Allah caused a fatal riot in Bangladesh.

The name of Allah (God) is considered sacred in Islam. Muslims are not necessarily offended by the simple appearance of Allah on commercial products. However, many are outraged when Allah is written on products that are somehow "unsuitable." The foot is considered unclean in Islamic tradition. When the name of Allah appears on a shoe, it is defiled by contact with the foot (hence the protests against Nike and Thom McAn).

(It should be noted that there is a wide range of opinion on this topic among Muslims. As long as there is no evidence of an actual intent to defame Islam, some North American Muslims shrug off such controversies, realizing that these incidents arise from ignorance on the part of advertisers. However, it is safe to say that no observant Muslim likes to see the name of Allah misused.)

In addition to alienating Muslims, advertisers have encountered difficulties in other ways. One major pharmaceutical company used a "before and after" campaign, showing an ill patient becoming healthy after using the company's product. The before picture was on the left, the after picture was on the right. Unfortunately, the company used the same artwork when advertising in a country where people read right-to-left. The ad now implied that a healthy person was made ill by this company's product!

As if the left-to-right/right-to-left dichotomy wasn't complicated enough, writing is not always arranged in horizontal lines. Chinese and Japanese are traditionally written in vertical lines, which are read top to bottom, right to left. Although many Japanese publications are now written with horizontal lines, the right to left pattern remains. In Taiwan, some newspapers print articles in a variety of ways – running in a horizontal line from right to left, then, in the same issue, running right to left!

These differing arrangements can bedevil global businesses. Take a look at your most impressive piece of business literature – your sharpest, best-designed brochure or prospectus. Now look at the back cover. The back cover probably isn't as impressive as the front cover. It may even be blank. But if you take that piece of literature to Saudi Arabia, Taiwan or Japan, that back cover may be the first thing your prospective client looks at! Magazines and books in these countries are set up in reverse of those in the USA. Our back cover is their front cover; to us, it looks as if they read books back to front.

Of course, the direction of page layouts and design elements affect not only books and newspapers, but brochures, annual reports, marketing materials, and all your firms' Web site designs!

The lesson in all this is simple: don't let your own cultural norms keep you from looking at your product as an international reader would. Review your images frontwards, backwards and upside down. Or, better yet, get a culturally-diverse, native-speaking focus group to give their point-of-view to your advertisements before you put them on public display.

Excerpted from OAG Frequent Flyer, October 5, 2001