In short: Transcreation means changing what is actually being said to match the culture of your targeted audience, their interests, their habits…
Every good translation requires some adaptation, like changing some adjectives to reflect the right tone in your language, rearranging the sentence structure to have a natural flow, or adding an extra information to a notion that might not be well known by the targeted audience.Transcreation is more than that.
For example, imagine you are adapting short city guides: visitors from country A might typically mostly be interested in all the cultural points of interest in a destination, while visitors from country B might prefer shopping. Some nationalities may be most concerned about whether a hotel has air conditioning and room service, while for others it’s all about on-site restaurants and spa. So, it might be worthy to rewrite hotel or city guides upon translation.
How to decide if transcreation is needed?
In short: Know your audience, know your client, know the intent of the content.
Know the targeted audience: professional translators and international marketing consultant may help (us!). A SEO-semantic study is also an amazing indicator of what an audience really search for.
Know your client & the intent of the content: that will help you to know how much length you have for adaptation, whether it’s discussing with the client directly about their strategy or asking the project manager who assigned you the translation work.
Want to know more or get assistance about transcreation? Just ask.
