What is transcreation?

‘Trans…what? Oh, transcription!’

‘No, no. Transcreation!’

‘What’s that??’

‘Let’s say it’s the meeting point between translation and copywriting.’

‘Copy…who?’

‘Ok, I’ll leave that for a different post. Transcreation is creative translation usually related to advertising; it can be the translation of a flyer, a slogan, an ad, etc.’

‘But, isn’t that marketing translation?’

‘Not exactly. In transcreation, we get a source text and fully recreate it in the target language, according to the target audience and trying to convey the style, tone and impact that the client wants.’

‘And how do we know what style, tone and impact the client wants to convey?’

‘Typically, the client will send you a briefing, describing the product, the brand identity and the target audience. Then, you “just” need to create a text that will incite the same emotions in the readers as the source text, by adapting it into our cultural context and using appealing language.’

‘But that’s a lot more work than “simple” translation.’

‘Transcreating a “simple” slogan with half a dozen words can take an hour. Or more, if the client asks you for two or three alternatives, which is actually quite common. Usually we’re also asked for an explanation of our rationale or to justify our choices and also, back translation.’

‘Back translation?’

‘Yes. After the text is translated into the target language, we’re asked to translate it back into the source language. As we’ve seen, this will not be a literal, word for word translation and the translated terms may not always be an exact match to the source ones. This way, the client is able to check if the same sense and any puns or wordplay were maintained.’

‘Can you give me an example?’

‘I’m working on one, as we speak. It’s not the trickiest one, but here it is: “there’s no need to make it up when it comes to make-up”. All suggestions gratefully received’