Q: What is transcreation?
A: Transcreation (also known as cultural adaptation, creative translation or cross-market copywriting) is a cross-cultural process of recreating original branding and marketing materials in another language and culture.
The purpose of transcreation is to adapt creative advertising content to the new markets in order to achieve the same psychological impact within a different culture and evoke the same emotional response among the people speaking a different language.
Q: How is transcreation different from marketing translation?
A: Marketing translation is the process of rendering a promotional message from one language into another focused on maintaining the original idea, style and readability with little or no (depending on client requirements) deviation from the original meaning.
Transcreation is more than straight translation. The task of a transcreator is not to provide a copy of a source message in another language but rather to write a new text from scratch. And to make sure that the result of this writing reaches hearts and minds of the relevant target audience, serious preliminary work is essential. This transcreative work includes:
- deep analysis of the promoted product features and company marketing strategies,
- understanding the brand image and values that need to be highlighted in the target text,
- recognizing the original promo materials’ style and tone of voice,
- understanding the purpose of the message to be transmitted,
- identifying the intended readership/target audience,
- identifying channels of distribution of the transcreated content.
Hence, a professional transcreator is a translator, a copywriter and a marketing specialist in one.
Lingwella’s native Russian transcreators will be happy to apply their creative thinking skills and experience in branding and global marketing for your transcreation projects.
Q: How is it done? What is your transcreation process?
A: The project starts with filling in a transcreation brief (will be provided to you upon request) — a questionnaire that summarizes information about your advertising campaign. It describes your brand image and corporate identity, your business goals, target audience demographics — people you wish to reach and persuade — and other essential project details. This brief is of vital importance for our transcreated text to keep its promotional function. After a thorough analysis of your brief, we will ask you for a Skype conversation. During verbal communication we will discuss further project nuances, establish due dates and work schedule, and estimate our reward.
Once everything is discussed and agreed upon, our collective brainstorming starts. During this transcreation process we will get in touch with you repeatedly to negotiate multiple word choices, suggest our ideas and linguistic solutions, and provide you with back translations (allowing you to have a clear idea of the meaning and accuracy of the transcreated text). At the final round, all texts and suggestions are carefully reviewed with the client to ensure that the end result is creative enough to produce the same expressive impact on the target reader as the original text. After client’s approval, the transcreated material can be forwarded for publication in mass media or other designated purposes.
Unlike translation, transcreation is normally billed by hours. Our minimum rate for transcreation services is $30 per hour.
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