en Transcreation Services| Blending Translation and Creation
Your Localization Roadmap
What is Transcreation?
It’s a unique process that involves adapting a message to make it culturally appropriate for the target audience in terms of feelings, reaction and ideas. This process usually ensures that the same message has the exact emotional impact on different audiences around the world. With globalization continuously growing, the demand for transcreation is becoming incredibly popular in the advertising, marketing and creative sectors.
What kind of content could require Transcreation?
This service is not usually required for rendering hard facts such as numerical analysis reports as it displays facts with no emotions, this would require a translator specialised in your industry. A transcreator is usually a translator with the skills of a creative writer in terms of creativity, being imaginative and having the ability to distance themselves completely from the original text to achieve the same reaction in the target audience with the different cultural preferences.
Examples of Transcreated content:
Coca Cola| One of the international leaders in soft drinks has been dedicated to their local markets for decades by creating detailed transcreation strategies for their content, including websites, slogans and Ads to match their target country. One of the many times Coca Cola did a great job transcreating a concept across the globe is their Share a coke campaign. They exploited the personalization in each country by including the most popular names in each country to maximise the chances that the customers will find their names on the cans or bottles. Coca Cola as a brand is generally about emotional brand building through bringing people together, but it sometimes didn’t seem to be enough in the Arab World. That is why the brand has been creating initiatives such as:
Crazy for Good| a kindness campaign in Egypt which encouraged people to perform random acts of kindness such as planting a tree, helping someone cross a street or handing someone a Coca Cola. This campaign took place at a point in time when Egypt’s morale was low which led to the campaigns huge success, as it attempted to restore happiness and inspiration within the consumers.
Coke Studio| a musical TV series that brought together Arab and international music artists to create fusion songs of the consumers' favourite songs which eventually reflected what the brand is all about: happiness, friendliness and celebrating good times.
Intel| The computer chip-manufacturer changed it’s worldwide slogan “Sponsors of Tomorrow” for the Brazilian market as the research showed that this slogan implies that Intel will not deliver its promises to the target market. So, the slogan in Brazil became “In Love with the Future”.
La Casa De Papel is a Spanish pun that does not translate into English| Netflix’s popular crime drama series translated to its literal meaning upon its release “The house of Paper” in the US but later changed to Money Heist which could be due to the confusion it created when the series first aired. House of paper is similar to house of cards which is a very delicate structure that could easily fall apart which could imply the fragility of the situations taking place throughout the series.
When to use Transcreation instead of Translation:
Brand/Product names: tend to be abstract, making it very difficult to translate thus your best bet to reach your worldwide audience is transcreation. For example, Volkswagen, one of China's most popular auto companies, is translated to (Dàzhng qch) in Chinese, which means "people's car," which has the same meaning in English but is spelt and pronounced differently.
Slogans: just like you have taken the time to create a slogan for your local market, you should further properly brand to connect with your foreign audience to avoid problems that could result from a poorly translated slogan. For example, Nike struggled to recreate “Just Do It” into Chinese to give it the same attitude that the company has in the rest of the world until they came up with “Use Sports” which generated the same image, but with a completely different phrasing and meaning than the typical English slogan.
Films, TV Scripts, Book titles: to ensure that your colloquial language is accurately conveyed to become a worldwide success. Your target audience needs to understand and appreciate every joke and hidden messages the way your local audience does.
Creative devices and writing: such as metaphors, headlines, rhythms, puns are usually the elements that translators struggle with creatively translating as these creations usually go beyond the literal meaning of the words.
Speeches: the candidates giving speeches tend to use creative devices such as historical references, political analogies and many others to make their presence on stage memorable. Also, their repetition and pauses during certain phrases to emphasize is a creative element they use. For the purpose of the speech to meet its purpose without leading to any disastrous translation mistakes, it should be creatively translated.
Video games: the terms and conditions and manuals for instructions usually require the typical word-to-word translation but the scripts and titles would lose their desired effect without transcreation.
Some of the key benefits of Transcreation for your business:
Allows for international engagement: using marketing messages that are appropriate for the audience’s cultural preferences increases their product acceptance thus motivating them to engage with your product or service.
Increases your worldwide brand awareness: creating culturally appropriate marketing content for your international audience improves awareness, eventually leading to increase in traffic, engagement and conversion.
Increases conversion rates: being culturally aware allows for your message to evoke the customers emotions thus leading to a visitor becoming a potential customer.
Improves your SEO and visibility: translating your content into other languages using translation machines is considered as duplicated content for the search engines which could even penalize your content in the search results. To avoid that, transcreators will typically address how the users research your content and combine it with SEO keywords. This will improve the content relevance to the audience thus increasing your click through rate.
Still can’t decide whether to transcreate or translate? Ask yourself the following questions:
What is your entry strategy? In most cases, it would be safer to explore into your target country before spending all your set budget on transcreation. So? Transcreate a small amount of content and test it in the market and keep on adjusting until the content becomes completely accepted and highly performing.
What kind of content are you planning to optimise for the new market? Divide your content and look into which will need to be creatively translated and which will need word-by-word translation.
Who is your target audience? Usually, some content will resonate well with certain cultures but could be better suited for other cultures and could even be banned for certain nations. Looking into the target audience will give you the ability to categorize your content into the correct language service.
Saudisoft’s cultural adaptation
Our creative language professionals convey your key marketing messages by using the source text as a reference to result in new text, not translated text. We provide you with suggestions for changes and how to adapt certain aspects of the project, for example: text, clothing and appearances, character names, food and beverage, etc, to adapt your key messages to suit your cultural needs. Our cultural adaptation reports cover different assessments: linguistic, graphics and cultural. In addition, our team fully understands the regulations, censorships and follow policies to each country’s media authority in the Middle East such as: GCAM for Saudi Arabia and the Egyptian National Media Authority for Egypt.
Book your consultation to get your global messaging strategy.
It’s a unique process that involves adapting a message to make it culturally appropriate for the target audience in terms of feelings, reaction and ideas. This process usually ensures that the same message has the exact emotional impact on different audiences around the world. With globalization continuously growing, the demand for transcreation is becoming incredibly popular in the advertising, marketing and creative sectors.
What kind of content could require Transcreation?
This service is not usually required for rendering hard facts such as numerical analysis reports as it displays facts with no emotions, this would require a translator specialised in your industry. A transcreator is usually a translator with the skills of a creative writer in terms of creativity, being imaginative and having the ability to distance themselves completely from the original text to achieve the same reaction in the target audience with the different cultural preferences.
Examples of Transcreated content:
Coca Cola| One of the international leaders in soft drinks has been dedicated to their local markets for decades by creating detailed transcreation strategies for their content, including websites, slogans and Ads to match their target country. One of the many times Coca Cola did a great job transcreating a concept across the globe is their Share a coke campaign. They exploited the personalization in each country by including the most popular names in each country to maximise the chances that the customers will find their names on the cans or bottles. Coca Cola as a brand is generally about emotional brand building through bringing people together, but it sometimes didn’t seem to be enough in the Arab World. That is why the brand has been creating initiatives such as:
Crazy for Good| a kindness campaign in Egypt which encouraged people to perform random acts of kindness such as planting a tree, helping someone cross a street or handing someone a Coca Cola. This campaign took place at a point in time when Egypt’s morale was low which led to the campaigns huge success, as it attempted to restore happiness and inspiration within the consumers.
Coke Studio| a musical TV series that brought together Arab and international music artists to create fusion songs of the consumers' favourite songs which eventually reflected what the brand is all about: happiness, friendliness and celebrating good times.
Intel| The computer chip-manufacturer changed it’s worldwide slogan “Sponsors of Tomorrow” for the Brazilian market as the research showed that this slogan implies that Intel will not deliver its promises to the target market. So, the slogan in Brazil became “In Love with the Future”.
La Casa De Papel is a Spanish pun that does not translate into English| Netflix’s popular crime drama series translated to its literal meaning upon its release “The house of Paper” in the US but later changed to Money Heist which could be due to the confusion it created when the series first aired. House of paper is similar to house of cards which is a very delicate structure that could easily fall apart which could imply the fragility of the situations taking place throughout the series.
When to use Transcreation instead of Translation:
Brand/Product names: tend to be abstract, making it very difficult to translate thus your best bet to reach your worldwide audience is transcreation. For example, Volkswagen, one of China's most popular auto companies, is translated to (Dàzhng qch) in Chinese, which means "people's car," which has the same meaning in English but is spelt and pronounced differently.
Slogans: just like you have taken the time to create a slogan for your local market, you should further properly brand to connect with your foreign audience to avoid problems that could result from a poorly translated slogan. For example, Nike struggled to recreate “Just Do It” into Chinese to give it the same attitude that the company has in the rest of the world until they came up with “Use Sports” which generated the same image, but with a completely different phrasing and meaning than the typical English slogan.
Films, TV Scripts, Book titles: to ensure that your colloquial language is accurately conveyed to become a worldwide success. Your target audience needs to understand and appreciate every joke and hidden messages the way your local audience does.
Creative devices and writing: such as metaphors, headlines, rhythms, puns are usually the elements that translators struggle with creatively translating as these creations usually go beyond the literal meaning of the words.
Speeches: the candidates giving speeches tend to use creative devices such as historical references, political analogies and many others to make their presence on stage memorable. Also, their repetition and pauses during certain phrases to emphasize is a creative element they use. For the purpose of the speech to meet its purpose without leading to any disastrous translation mistakes, it should be creatively translated.
Video games: the terms and conditions and manuals for instructions usually require the typical word-to-word translation but the scripts and titles would lose their desired effect without transcreation.
Some of the key benefits of Transcreation for your business:
Allows for international engagement: using marketing messages that are appropriate for the audience’s cultural preferences increases their product acceptance thus motivating them to engage with your product or service.
Increases your worldwide brand awareness: creating culturally appropriate marketing content for your international audience improves awareness, eventually leading to increase in traffic, engagement and conversion.
Increases conversion rates: being culturally aware allows for your message to evoke the customers emotions thus leading to a visitor becoming a potential customer.
Improves your SEO and visibility: translating your content into other languages using translation machines is considered as duplicated content for the search engines which could even penalize your content in the search results. To avoid that, transcreators will typically address how the users research your content and combine it with SEO keywords. This will improve the content relevance to the audience thus increasing your click through rate.
Still can’t decide whether to transcreate or translate? Ask yourself the following questions:
What is your entry strategy? In most cases, it would be safer to explore into your target country before spending all your set budget on transcreation. So? Transcreate a small amount of content and test it in the market and keep on adjusting until the content becomes completely accepted and highly performing.
What kind of content are you planning to optimise for the new market? Divide your content and look into which will need to be creatively translated and which will need word-by-word translation.
Who is your target audience? Usually, some content will resonate well with certain cultures but could be better suited for other cultures and could even be banned for certain nations. Looking into the target audience will give you the ability to categorize your content into the correct language service.
Saudisoft’s cultural adaptation
Our creative language professionals convey your key marketing messages by using the source text as a reference to result in new text, not translated text. We provide you with suggestions for changes and how to adapt certain aspects of the project, for example: text, clothing and appearances, character names, food and beverage, etc, to adapt your key messages to suit your cultural needs. Our cultural adaptation reports cover different assessments: linguistic, graphics and cultural. In addition, our team fully understands the regulations, censorships and follow policies to each country’s media authority in the Middle East such as: GCAM for Saudi Arabia and the Egyptian National Media Authority for Egypt.
Book your consultation to get your global messaging strategy.
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