There is no barrier of online business if the right way is paved. Importantly, to achieve marketing goals, it’s not just translation!
Making copywriting and some marketing content work in multiple languages requires adaption by taking target audience, culture and situation into consideration.
What’s the difference between translation and transcreation?
Translation and transcreation are to transform content from a source language to a target language.
The translation is limited to original text or audio, i.e. basically it’s just strict with what the original text is for understandability.
The transcreation is done by considering other elements like local culture, customs, and specific requirements (e.g. target audience, marketing objectives, brand guideline) for understandability, attractiveness, and communication effectiveness. This means the transcreation involves adaptation and, if should be, it’s done like local writing or copywriting.
Choose translation or transcreation?
Translation is suitable for typical informative materials and documents e.g. sales reports, financial statements, terms and conditions, privacy policy etc.
Transcreation is suitable for marketing materials e.g. website copywriting, app UI (user interface), advertisement copywriting, news, articles, social media content etc.
If you are localizing a website, you may choose both translation and transcreation. For those pages regarding legal information and contact info which doesn’t need stylistic wording, you can use translation. But for those pages needed to be captivating like homepage, about us, products etc., it’s advisable to use transcreation.
What if I use a translation service for marketing materials?
As translation is just a skill for conveying meanings for understanding without professional writing and copywriting skills, your translated marketing materials could sound strangely foreign, don’t achieve marketing purposes, and may even break down communication. That will hurt your brand perception and turn your target audience disconnected.
Is it worth paying for transcreation service?
For marketing materials, yes, of course. The cost of transcreation is higher than translation but it meets marketing needs as transcreators are multi-lingual and skilled at professional writing and copywriting for specific marketing channels and mediums so they know how to get things done properly—not just converting into a target language version but also meeting marketing requirements, for examples, making advertisement copy effective within limited character count, getting your brand messages across artistically on specific layouts for different channels, and triggering your target audience to hit a call-to-action button with catchy transcreated copywriting.