Transcreation Services

What is transcreation?

Transcreation means ‘translating’ and ‘recreating’ an original text in a new language, whilst making sure it is still appropriate in its intended context. Clients looking for transcreation work will need to give their translation agency the freedom not only to translate a document, but also to make significant changes to it in the process.

Most projects of this nature are undertaken when working with marketing teams, since transcreation services are most often used to convey the same message where there is no direct translation or cultural hook. This is ideal for advertising copy, where it is arguably more important to put across the overall meaning and nuance of a tagline or slogan accurately, rather than give a word-for-word translation of a text.

The transcreation services team at London Translations are multidisciplinary experts, not only adept at translation but creative writing and industry-specific knowledge to bring your company’s message to a wider global audience. By taking a detailed brief, we can get a clear understanding of the aims of any marketing campaign and overall brand voice, and use this knowledge to comprehensively transcreate all documentation, will the full cooperation of our clients.

As obvious as the definition is, translation is the process of translating what is being said in one language into another. However, all but the most basic of translation involves the translator using their own skill and judgement in order to best capture the essence of what the original document means. The subtleties and nuances of any given languages are such that no two translators will ever produce exactly the same finished texts, even though both are equally accurate.

As a general rule, the more abstract a document the more variation between two translations of it are likely to be even though they both remain ‘correct’, or ‘accurate’. For instance, there will be much more variance in the translation of a poem than there will be in the translation of a set of operating instructions for a toaster. The former is loaded with emotion and personal interpretation, while the latter is a set of instructions with little ambiguity.

By comparison, transcreation allows a translator to take even more license with language, being less literal and more liberal with the source text, in order to get as close as possible to putting across a text’s original meaning in a new language. This service offers even more freedom from our linguists, allowing them to use their own knowledge of the target audience and language to elicit the response you want from the finished text.