If your aim is to reach Italian consumers, you are probably planning a content strategy or digital marketing campaign involving an English to Italian translation of your marketing materials or a professional copywriting service, but do you know how transcreation can be useful to your business?
You may have heard about transcreation when talking about slogans and payoffs, but what exactly is transcreation? Let’s discuss this more in-depth and find out how transcreation can be useful to boost your business in Italy.
What is transcreation and why is it useful to business?
The term “transcreation” is pretty straightforward: it comes from “translation” and “creation” and has been used for the past 30 years to indicate a kind of creative translation that crosses into copywriting territory.
In other words, transcreation is creatively translating promotional texts for a specific market, as if they were directly created in the target language. This is why transcreation often completely changes the source text, transcreating a completely new message. In fact, as I’ve previously mentioned, expanding into a new market means addressing new, specific audiences and adopting localized communication.
Why, then, is transcreation useful for your business?
First of all, transcreation helps you convey your message more effectively, making sure that its meaning is not lost in translation. In fact, when it comes to marketing materials, slogans, payoffs, and even brand names, it’s particularly important to take the target country into consideration and avoid sending wrong or offensive messages.
Moreover, the creative aspect of transcreation helps you catch the attention of your target audience while preserving the original message. In fact, transcreation professionals work with their clients to make sure their new campaigns are as effective as the original ones. And don’t forget that catching attention is important both offline (with your printed material, brochures, catalogues, etc) and online!
Transcreation is not just translation
So what’s the main difference between translation and transcreation? Well, in the world of translation, it’s important to preserve the original shape of the message: some liberties are generally accepted but, at the end of the day, everybody expects to see more or less the same sentences, words, and paragraphs as in the source text.
Instead, in transcreation, these rules do not apply. That is to say, the original text may be used exclusively as a reference and the translator is not bound to the same checklists as traditional translation: what gets translated is not the text but the intention of the message.
If you’re wondering how transcreation can be useful for your specific business, let me help you: with more than 15 years’ experience in the field of marketing and tourism language services, I can help you reach Italian consumers in (Italian) style! Contact me for a non-binding quote and we’ll take it from there.
