If you’re looking to translate your content, chances are you already know the translation process: it converts a piece of text from one language into another. However, you may not be familiar with the term transcreation.
When it comes to transcreation, some people think it’s the same thing as translation, which isn’t true. Translation is no doubt important, but transcreation services play an even more important role, as you’ll discover in this write-up.
If you run a company and want to advertise your products or services to users around the world, you should familiarize yourself with the concept of transcreation. According to marketing, social media, and business experts, including this process in your global strategy can have a lot of bright sides for you. As it has the potential to boost creativity in your customer communications which helps in improving the overall performance and sales of any company.
So, what is transcreation?
The term transcreation, as it sounds, is a mix of two words: translation and creation. As far as translation is concerned, it renders content into a new language. While creation is an act of creating something new.
The goal of this highly creative process is to adapt marketing collateral or other similar pieces of writing while keeping the same intent, tone, style, emotion, context, and purpose as the original.
The experts delivering professional transcreation services don’t pay much attention to recreating translate content word by word, letter by letter for a target language. Rather, their focus is more on the emotional appeal of the message and how consumers will receive it.
Also, transcreation resembles translation services in many ways but the former entails far more localization. Because transcreation goes beyond simply changing words from one language to the other. Transcreators enjoy an extensive creative license while performing their jobs. They can change some or a significant portion of the original content as long as they convey the same message and stick to the same idea.
Transcreation vs. Translate: What’s the Difference?
Both transcreation and translation work with the conversion of text into a new language. The main difference between them lies in the tone and message.
The transcreation process will not just alter the words but may interfere with the underlying idea of the content. It allows transcreators to add fresh insights and creativity to the materials. They do so to affirm the original idea, translate, or change it to fit the specific target market.
If you ask about what transcreation solutions are the most effective, look for ones that combine flawless translation talents with unmatched localization strategies. The individuals who provide these services are experts in the linguistic field. Who not just exhibit fluency in both the source and target languages but also a great deal of creativity. This enables them to produce engaging and relevant content in the target language, helping the client to connect deeply with their audiences.
What kind of content is a good candidate for transcreation?
You don’t require transcreation in order to translate hard facts. For instance, you’ve got an inventory report. It briefly tells the readers about the current stock at the company, where items are selling fastest, and things like that. You see this is completely factual, non-emotional material that does not require a creative approach in translation. To translate this material, you only need professional translation services having experience and knowledge in your industry.
However, there are other kinds of materials and messages which communicate through tone, style, emotion, and images. When working with such materials, the literal word-for-word translations rarely work. Instead, the linguistic and cultural nuances play a critical role in the translation of such content.
Common examples of content needing a transcreation service are as follows:
- Billboards
- Advertisements
- Slogans
- Taglines
- TV commercials
- Film titles
- Banners
- Book titles
When transcreation overlaps with video translation services
Transcreation finds immense use in videos. This is because video materials contain a lot of creative content. However, when it comes to translating this creative content within videos, it becomes essential to apply the principles of video translation services and transcreation at the same time.
Here are a few cases when you may need to combine both these services:
- You have to adapt slogans and taglines in promotional videos
- Your video content includes visual elements such as animations, illustrations, and graphics
- You need dubbing or voiceover services for your brand
- Your videos include wordplay, humor, or cultural references
How to get a professional transcreation service
You will get professional standard results in your target language when you provide as much detailed information as possible. Your language service provider (LSP) doesn’t just need to know about the original and target language. They will also need to understand various other things about your transcreation project.
Let them know about details like your text type, key message, context, style, tonality, any restrictions on the length of the text, and more. If you have a creative brief, forward it to your LSP. That’s how you enable your linguistic professionals to quickly review all your important information. Moreover, if your LSP requires any additional information, they will surely contact you for it.
By having an experienced partner on your side and informing them clearly about the things discussed above, you’re certain to achieve optimum results in transcreation.
