QUALITY TRANSCREATION MAINTAINS THE FEELING AND IDEA OF THE ORIGINAL SOURCE
Written by Belén Wilson — Creative Lead, Creative Strategy & Transcreation • Solving brand & products’ problems with creative ideas since 1998.
If you work in marketing and advertising, you have heard of transcreation. It’s a fairly recent portmanteau/blend word to describe a speciality that has been growing in the past decade. When you type it, the automatic spellcheck will want to change it for its close cousin “transcription”. But that would be wrong. Transcreation’s a strand of translation that deals with advertising and marketing collaterals. It is a much freer and creative approach to traditional translation because it requires to recognise and use elements unique to a culture; like puns, cultural references, unique layouts, imagery and meaning.
It’s like asking someone to rewrite something you have written but in their own words.
The objective is to preserve the nuance and creativity that goes into creating marketing pieces as much as possible by providing a cultural adaptation of that creative content. Not easy and never straightforward. A good transcreation piece should maintain the brand or campaign identity in each market as intact as possible and make the message meaningful to that particular audience. It’s like asking someone to rewrite something you have written but in their own words.
Knowledge of how to ideate comes very handy for this. If you know how to take a brief and how to transform it into a fully working, nuanced but straightforward idea, then you are halfway there to doing a good job. The process will also require not just translation skills but copywriting knowledge too because literal translations seldom work in marcomms (You may as well use Google Translate). In human terms, finding and working with the nuances of a brand’s message becomes essential. In-depth knowledge of both the source language, the target language’s cultures, and a strong command of grammar is a must.
I personally relish using my language knowledge in combination with my advertising experience. With transcreation, you still need to aim to bring every nuance and emotion to life for your audience, and focus not merely on the meaning of your source material, but the response that provokes in the campaign’s target market — always aiming to inspire them to fulfil the call to action. Apply all this to any campaign marketing collateral, e.g. video scripts, creative assets, ad copy, your adapted concept, tagline and your words will not miss the target market and therefore, the investment.
The brief is key and the starting point.
Like with anything to do with creative in advertising the brief is key and the starting point. In my experience, it’s crucial that the same brief that the source language team received and any of the aftermark learnings should be passed on to the transcreator to avoid misunderstandings in the response. Discuss and dissect the brief before you even attempt to start transcreating. The transcreation will need an editor or proofreader to verify the direction of the work; this preferably shouldn’t be the client and again should be someone familiar with marcom territories.
Check and check again.
Transcreation, at this level, is like a dance. There is much deliberation, toing and froing, you can’t be precious, but you may have to stand firm for the final result. Of course, doubt is good, but it is important not to degrade or dilute things too much through analysis paralysis. Ultimately great transcreation contains a healthy dose of bravery.
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Do you need help with transcreation or content reviewing? When it comes to the Spanish/British market, I can talk to the locals like a local. I was born and raised among three cultures, and I speak Spanish, French and Catalan. I moved to the UK in 1996 and worked for 15 years in London’s ad industry on numerous national and international communications campaigns such as Old Spice, Google, ROC, Merck and Amazon Prime. Alongside my regular day-to-day, I produce transcreation and content writing for the Spanish market and Ski Andorra. Contact belen@dostwo.com for more detailed case studies. Or visit www.dostwo.com.
