Transcreation is a service that’s halfway between translation and copywriting (and thus creation). In short, it involves the interlinguistic adaptation of advertising and marketing copy. This means rewriting a promotional or advertising text in another language with respect to the original.

Translating is like a journey: there’s a text that’s the point of departure (the source text, written in the language from which you translate) and a point of arrival (the target text, written in the language into which you translate). Advertising is a cultural product, and the culture of a population is intricately tied to its language. In fact, world visions and communication styles are influenced by language structures. Furthermore, the aim of advertising is to elicit a given reaction in its target audience, and copywriting consists of writing advertising and marketing copy that can persuade the public. To be more incisive and memorable, wordplay and cultural references are often used. Often, however, they are not translatable or understandable for people living in other countries, who speak a different language, have a different culture and are familiar with another market. That’s why transposing advertising messages or marketing information from a source language to a target language is more complicated than straight translation.

In an increasingly connected world in which geographical distances are bridged by the internet, companies are also selling outside their domestic market. They chiefly turn to foreign markets and, potentially, the whole world. When a company communicates on an international level, it must satisfy two opposite needs: keeping the meaning and tone of the original message in the different languages, while also advertising in a way that “works” in the target country. Since the aim is to produce copy that is effective for the target culture and market, it’s also beneficial to readapt it completely if faithful transposition cannot achieve this. Let’s look at an example. The Italian payoff for Norton™ AntiVirus, “Boldly Go” and “Go boldly, not blindly”, respectively became “Punta in alto” (aim high) and “Punta in alto senza rischi” (aim high without risks). Both work in the two languages, but they say completely different things: the Italian transcreation of the message is a complete rewriting of the original. The process that led me to developing the Italian version is explained in detail here.

Whenever there are advertising and marketing messages to be used in different countries, transcreation enters into the picture. Here’s my own personal definition of transcreation, from the academic paper “Transcreation as Creation of a New Original: a Norton™ Case Study”: “writing advertising or marketing copy for a specific market, starting from copy written in a source language, as if the target text had been originated in the target language and culture”.