In an article for Articulate Marketing , Christian Arno summed up the goal of transcreation as “getting content that elicits the same reaction in every language, something that translation alone can’t achieve.” In translation, word choice carries different meanings. Arno uses “accurate” and “faithful” as examples of translations from English; when translated, these words seem to imply quality, but when transcreated, we find that the words “bold” or “original” better fit what we’re trying to achieve.
Choosing one word or another, in cases like the one mentioned above, are questions I ask myself when I transcreate content on a weekly and sometimes daily basis. Whether in the office or for a friend, I have a general rule I like to apply: can my Spanish-speaking friends and family read this and not realize it was translated from another language? This test of fire gives me the freedom to make the necessary changes to ensure the content can better connect with, for example, an audience in Spain.
Transcreation leads to global content
At WAM, transcreation is at the heart of our multilingual lithuania phone number data content projects, both internal and for our clients. On the internal side, we work on adapting content and social media copy from Spanish to American English and Italian. This sometimes involves changing parts to reference media outlets in each country or modifying examples to make them work for the target audience. In short, I make changes as I see fit to adapt the content to Spanish in order to preserve the same context and intent conveyed in the original version.
We recently optimized the website content for a major hotel chain in six different languages: English, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, and German. In order to achieve more conversions , we knew that authentic content was a must . That’s why, in all of our content marketing projects, we have a team of native writers in the languages of our target markets, ensuring that the content has the cultural fluency needed to connect with our consumers. As a result, each language version includes idioms, common phrases, and other sociolinguistic components that are critical to understanding the content.
Cultural fluency and coherence are one of the essential parts of the transcreation process. Although Spanish is my first language, the cultural nuances and expressions are not the same in Spain as in Latin America. Every time I start a task like this, I always ask myself if it is for a Spanish or Latin American audience so I know how to approach the translation according to the final audience.
Transcreation isn’t exclusive to companies that have enough capital to open offices and have native teams in all markets . In the case of the hotel chain I referenced above, our team of writers was spread across four continents, and with our use of Agile and Scrum Methodology , being in different time zones was an obstacle. Including transcreation in your content marketing will be the difference between having content that connects with the audience or, on the contrary, that doesn’t work.