As we try to reduce to a single word as many activities in our lives as possible, translation could not avoid being affected by our surge of fitting concepts into a single “cell”.

At the end of the 80’s, as IT took importance, we came up with localisation (or localization), to describe a more complex process than just translating a text. This involved adapting the software and the content to a different user environment and cultural preferences.

Translation, or multilingual content adaption, has evolved into yet a new concept: Transcreation, which tries to accommodate the growth of certain requirements from the content producers.

To understand how we get to this new term, we should start by differentiating between two main types of content:

Information content: reader is expecting it and needs it. The producer of the content objective is to transfer accurate information to the reader.

Engagement content: reader not necessarily expects it, neither needs it. The producer of the content objective is generally to engage the reader and generate an action from him.

The producer’s expectations from the translation exercise will then be different for these two content types:

Information: A successful translation will deliver accurately all of the information of the source into the target, adapted to the reader’s cultural and linguistic environment.

Engagement:  A successful translation will deliver a message to the reader that will produce the action wanted by the producer, not necessarily being accurate in translation of the source information.

Although “Engagement Content” translation is not new in its concept, there are definitely a growing number of mechanisms that the producer is using to generate this engagement with the reader and that require a significantly more sophisticated approach when adapting to other languages.

The producer is now faced with the challenge of delivering “engagement content” into multiple markets and languages in a particularly high demanding on line environment.

Therefore the company proceeds to ask their current Translation provider to adapt this “engagement” content into the target markets. Most of the Translation providers used by these companies have measured so far the quality of their delivery by the accuracy of the translation, not by the actions resulting from the reader.

TRANSCREATION – our new concept

In order to successfully “transcreate” (excuse my English), the provider and the client will have to engage in a different relationship than that of a standard localisation project:

THE CLIENT

Providing the source content is not enough to expect quality on the target.
Style guides including references to the tone of voice, target audience, character restrictions, brand messages (such as vision or objectives) and other company background information will be required in order for the language specialist to generate the expected engagement with the reader.

Interaction with the Language provider becomes more important, as it could involve selecting amongst several samples of language specialist works, reviewing at early stages or re-creating the campaign to accommodate some target specific demands.

Measuring success becomes a complex task. Accuracy can be somehow measured objectively, but how to measure “reader engagement” is a much complex task. It is easy to fall in subjective measurement, such as whether the marketing resource in the target market thinks it is “catchy” or not.

Return on the investment is now to be re-evaluated, as cost of transcreation cannot be compared to that of translation. Also translation is in many occasions an “after the event” cost allocation, as the customer has already purchased the product when receiving the localised content. But Transcreation will ALWAYS be looking to trigger a sale that still doesn’t exist.

THE PROVIDER

Choosing the language resources becomes now a much more complex task, as it could require customer approval, samples and checking previous work. Also resources capable of transcreating are less available as those with skills to accurately translate into their language.

Project management tasks also change, having to allocate resources to this task that understand the marketing and copywriting processes and that are closer to the customer and the language specialist.

Feedback from client has to be built into the process from the very initial stages of the work. Therefore systems and communication procedures need to be in place.

Profit and price becomes a more complex exercise, as the Language provider will have to include a significant number of tasks to a sometimes reduced number of words.

Turnaround is now essential in many of the transcreation activities, as they will be for social media and online activities that will be generated in a significantly short period of time and require a very short time to market.

The challenges for both the producer and the language provider are to define the adequate process, the measurement tools and the rewards of the Transcreation activities. As  long as the “language talent” is available.