When creativity meets translation – transcreation services

Creativity plays a crucial role in adapting a text to another language. Every high quality translation requires accuracy as well as knowledge of the cultural background. Yet, sometimes this is not enough to convey the linguistic nuances or the emotion that the source text evoked. That is when transcreation services come in.

What are transcreation services?

Transcreation means recreating a text for a target audience in a way that is appropriate and relevant for them.

Targeting international consumers

In the current world more and more businesses need to go across borders with their products, services and brands. Targeting the international consumer grows the demand for transcreation services.

• Trans creation is usually used for marketing, media and advertising texts. Choosing to adapt the same text, rather than creating a completely new one is usually less expensive and helps maintain the same “feel” of the originals text. Branding efforts benefit by maintaining this connection.
• In order to grasp the meaning of the text the linguist needs to be familiar with the product, service or brand. Working closely with the company and reading promotional materials is a must.
• What the linguist brings to the mix is creativity and knowledge of the cultural background.
• Taking a concept and recreating it in another language is challenging since the linguist needs to maintain the meaning, the style, the imagery, the emotions evoked by the text and the cultural background.

A must-have tool for success

Transcreation is powerful when it comes to international marketing. Slogans, taglines, mottos and other components of marketing copy cannot be translated merely; your information can reach its purpose only when it is recast in times that have natural meaning for another society and language.  All types of branded materials, including advertisements, brochures, and websites, can be transcreated.  And that makes it conceivable to carry your content into an international market with the highest impact.

Transcreation services enable you to reach global audiences in ways you never imagined possible. It gives you the strength not just to reach out to people in their languages, but also to touch their cultural expectations and choices; it is a strategic solution to powerful global marketing. You might want to tailor your information for various foreign experiences to localize foreign clients’ experience on your website. In this case, whatever your global marketing and advertising intentions, transcreation is a crucial tool for success.

When are such services needed?

The target audience for transcreation services is usually composed of more than customers, stakeholders, re-sellers or even employees are included in the group. The text should appeal to all of them. Obviously, the clients are the most important and re-creating the content for them is a must, however, let’s not forget your employees you’ve hired in that country, how are they going to be able to sell your products or answer client’s questions if they don’t know much about the products? Same goes for others like business partners and stakeholders.

Going global or going local was never an easy option. While going global may need less transcreation services, going local definitely makes use of this service more. It is a matter of will in the end, are you going to simply translate the text on your website, or are you going to localize it and adapt it to the target market? Because in the end, that is what transcreation services do, adapt your text to a target market in a way they would thing it was specifically created for them.

Going into less important details it is best to note that today, in the era of technology and internet, people are not going to give your company credit for translating for them, instead, they will ask themselves what the hell were you thinking when you’ve added such a bad translation on the company website.

Simply using machine translation tools won’t cut it, same as using professional translation and no content adaptation. Translation is no longer enough, transcreation services are.