Monday, August 9, 2010

Audience, Audience, Audience!

When I majored Interpretation & Translation at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, I learned the communication theory while taking a class named, 'Understanding of Interpretation and Translation, which is the most basic course for a freshman in my department.' The SMCRE-model of communication my professor lectured has still reminded me of the importance of information delivery on the basis of receiver's awareness. 


What the model explains is that a sender, which can be a narrator or a speaker sends a message through several channels after encoding process, and it will be sent to a receiver. Then, the receiver will decode the message and make a response by showing effect to the sender on feedback. Therefore, to have a receiver get the message and understand it correctly, a sender always needs to think of the understanding level of audience. 


While I translated text materials in English into Korean or in Korean into English, I was focussed on how to choose a proper word or a fancy phrase that would be familiar to readers, and let them have the equal level of awareness with the one I have on the text. That is to say, I was mainly concerned with the content.  


But, recently when it comes to marketing communication, all of people take interests in the channel, which is social media. To convey messages better and better, they use various kinds of web-based tools, and to try to engage with more audience. This is because a lot of people spend more time on social media, and marketers also follow them to catch up people's attention. 


I could recognize two things in terms of communication. People prefer image or video to text, and it has changed the main communication tool. But, the point which has not been changed is that communication always depends on the audience stance.