Transcreation – the creative way to bridge cultures, markets, and continents*

Sometimes, translations do not suffice. That’s when transcreation comes into play. For example, it would not have been appropriate for McDonald’s to translate its iconic “I’m lovin’ it” into Mandarin. Instead – and in adherence to the Chinese conventions and retaining its youthful, confident street vibe of the original – McDonald’s opted for “I just like (it).

Although “Transcreation” is a relatively new term, it already found its way into Wikipedia: “[…] A successfully transcreated message evokes the same emotions and carries the same implications in the target language as it does in the source language. Increasingly, transcreation is used in global marketing and advertising campaigns as advertisers seek to transcend the boundaries of culture and language.” As opposed to localization, Transcreation is based on translation, but adds an element of new creation in the target language.  

Complex Process 

As clear and thorough as this definition may sound, it obviously does not cover the complex processes that are a prerequisite for successful transcreation projects and all the needed parties involved in it. Being allowed to deviate from the source text allows creative and more "fitting" approaches, but reduces the control clients have over their documents in all cultures. And the further you take transcreation, the clearer the original message brief must be conveyed to all stakeholders: Creative briefs – normal starters for source-language marketing campaigns – become a key requirement for transcreation, too. The degree of transcreation also depends on the type of campaign you envision and how much difference there is in the way a product is used in the target markets, and what features are perceived to be important. How far can transcreation go, and what does a client have to provide in order to ensure the target texts still remain faithful to the original intention while allowing the local color to find its way into the messaging? How can the many more parties involved work together to make the end product work while still conveying the same general intention? What are the skill and tool sets all the parties need? How can existing translation technology cope with this and where are new approaches necessary? And what approaches? What are the implications on turnaround times and cost? Are clients willing to take longer deadlines and additional cost into account and why?  

Thorough Insight 

These and more questions have been the focus of a project at eurocom which was co-funded by the Vienna Business Agency, a subsidiary of the City of Vienna, and was nominated as a finalist in the "Service Awards 2013". Together with two master thesis students at the University of Graz we have investigated the opinions, expectations and possibilities of both our clients (!) and our vendors to venture into a process like this. For example, 92% of all interviewees would appreciate a transcreation portal of some kind which should be easy to use, intuitive, have the possibility of defining workflows, allow several users to access documents at same time, track changes and make these traceable to different collaborators, integrate terminology and include visuals so reviewers can see text in context of where it will be used. We also have analyzed the little literature that exists on this topic. And based on all this input, we have developed a refined collaborative process, defined a skill set and built a prototype of a platform that can cope with all these expectations. This platform helps us to reduce process costs – remember, it’s a very complex process! – avoid slips and eventually helps our customers to sell more with customized marketing materials with less work.  

Key Findings 

So, let’s summarize what we have learned from all our investigations and projects so far: In order to cope with transcreation projects successfully you need

• to decide on type of campaign and level of transcreation
• to get a briefing for message
• to define a team and who decides what (internally and externally)
• to introduce and adhere to collaborative process and tools

Contact us if you need more information!

*Please note that this is a joint blog post with eurocom. Kaleidoscope and eurocom hosted a session on the topic of transcreation at Gala 2014 in Istanbul.