What is the difference between transcreation and translation?

Transcreation involves adapting creative content from one language to another while retaining its original intent, tone, and style. Translation, on the other hand, focuses on accurately conveying the meaning of text from one language to another, often at the expense of stylistic and cultural nuances.

Why is copywriting important for businesses?

Copywriting is important for businesses because it allows them to create content that persuades, informs, and engages their target audience. Effective copy can drive traffic, conversions, and brand awareness, leading to increased revenue and growth.

What are the benefits of hiring in-house linguists for transcreation and copywriting services?

Hiring in-house linguists for transcreation and copywriting services ensures a high level of quality and accuracy, as well as a deep understanding of cultural nuances that are essential for creating content that resonates with diverse audiences. In-house linguists can also provide more personalized and efficient service, resulting in faster turnaround times and better communication throughout the project.

Transcreation & Copywriting: Balancing Creativity & Culture

Getting a message across accurately in a foreign language isn’t as simple as translation alone. In fact, it takes a combination of transcreation and copywriting to craft a message that is not only culturally relevant but also resonates with the intended audience. This article delves into the intricacies of transcreation and copywriting, examining how they collaborate to produce captivating content that can engage a worldwide audience.

For Asian languages, there is almost no such thing as a normal translation, editing, proofreading job and if you’ve worked with them for a while you’ll probably know. The literal translation in almost any of these languages is a no-go and sometimes as a reliable translation partner, we have to advise our clients on which service to use.

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Transcreation & Copywriting

Transcreation Services

If you haven’t heard of transcreation services before, it’s an essential process for businesses that want to reach diverse audiences. Essentially, it involves adapting creative content from one language to another, while retaining its intended meaning, tone, and style. It’s not a simple word-for-word translation, but rather a process that requires a deep understanding of cultural nuances and sensitivities to create a message that resonates with the target audience on an emotional level. This task requires a combination of linguistic and creative skills, and when done correctly, it can result in powerful and impactful content that directly speaks to the intended audience. If you’re looking to take your business to new heights, investing in transcreation services could be the key to unlocking new markets and expanding your global reach.

Copywriting Services

For organizations and individuals trying to produce effective and interesting content, copywriting services are a crucial resource. Copywriting is the process of creating written material with the intention of entertaining, educating, or persuading the reader. A talented copywriter can take difficult-to-understand topics and ideas and present them in a way that will grab the reader’s attention and persuade them to take the required action. Many duties, such as writing website content, social media postings, product descriptions, email marketing, and more, can be included in copywriting services. Because it may improve traffic, conversions, and brand awareness, a well-written copy can make all the difference in a company’s success. So, if you want to take your content to the next level, investing in professional copywriting services is a wise decision that can pay dividends in the long run.

The difficulty of transcreation for Asian languages?

The “natural habitat” of transcreation services is advertising and marketing. It is a necessary tool for almost any company that seeks expansion not only in its own country but in foreign markets too. But let’s see why it is considered a challenge.

Following all the explanations we’ve shared so far about our professional translation services, we must say that good quality transcreation is influenced by two major factors:

Contextual translation is a must. If you want to reach the exact target audience in your materials, we would need factors like the tone of voice, company culture, objectives of the material, and the message that has to reach the audience would improve the quality of the transcreation service.

For Asian markets, all marketing materials should carefully fit language, culture, and design into a complete map of your company. That map includes all the small nuances making your brand ‘click” with the right target audience. This is key to a successful transcreation.

Yana Dinchiyska COO

To make it easier we’ve prepared a transcreation sample for one of the language pairs we work with – English into the Thai language:

Source Language: On public transport, using the noise-canceling feature will soften the roar of the engine and traffic. In the open-plan office, it eliminates the constant chatter and limits interruptions. On an airplane, it’s a revelation. (Text Source: The Guardian)

Target Language: เมื่อต้องใช้งานระบบขนส่งสาธารณะ ความสามารถในการตัดเสียงรบกวนจะลดความรุนแรงของเสียงคำรามจากเครื่องยนต์และการจราจร ในสำนักงานที่วางผังแบบเปิด ความสามารถดังกล่าวจะขจัดเสียงพูดคุยที่ดังอย่างต่อเนื่องและจำกัดการรบกวน และจะเปรียบดั่งแสงสว่างในความมืดมิดทันทีเมื่ออยู่บนเครื่องบิน

Explanation: The sentence in red cannot be translated literally into the Thai language. The meaning wouldn’t make sense or sound natural within the surrounding context. As a result, our linguist explained it more by translating as it’s like bright lights in the dark, which conveys that this type of earphone is like a new/undiscovered gear that is useful on the plane.

Our Transcreation Team

There are two essential parts of a successful transcreation, that affect Asian languages, and both of these factors are interlinked.

Linguists

The top and most important people when one deals with transcreation services are the linguists that a company has available. These linguists are not only masters in translation but creative and willing to go the extra mile to achieve the final result.

Project Managers

For transcreation, the context is one of the most important tools that a linguist should be provided with. For that purpose, experienced Project Managers know how to gather the required information. Because without a backstory, the company’s target audience, tone of voice, and type of objectives, it is very difficult to achieve the proper quality.

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1-StopAsia’s solution for you

Transcreation services and Desktop publishing

Anyone who aims at Asian markets should consider the differences in perception of the East and the West. By that we mean – design and layout, differences in the location of the information on marketing materials, colors meaning, and layout. A lot of these factors are influenced by the writing direction of the languages in Asia. For example, Japanese is nowadays widely written horizontally but in some cases, a vertical direction should be used rather than horizontal. This is the case for newspapers and many magazines or novels which are still printed vertically.

Typesetting Chinese language is in some aspects similar to typesetting English but there are many differences, stemming from the very nature of the script. A very strong example is that the justified alignment is as widely used as in English, but the concept of italics or cursive is non-existent not only in Chinese but in Japanese and Korean as well.

One key service that we do recommend for Asian languages is Desktop Publishing. IIt is a very specific and demanding task, but it gives the final professional touch to your documentation.

Copywriting

While transcreation is a creative translation based on original writing, copywriting is a completely different thing. Copywriting requires completely re-writing the text so that it has a different story and meaning from the original. That is the reason why copywriters are different from translators and transcreators. At 1-StopAsia, transcreation is the majority of the projects we receive. When it comes to copywriting, we have limited capacity and experience in it. When requested, please have in mind it will take more time and the subjects and markets we have chosen to cover are limited.

Quality Assurance Team

Quality has always been the main pain point when it comes to translation since forever. As a solution, we have recently implemented a Quality Assurance step within our translation process. It complies with our ISO 9001/2015 and ISO 17100 certifications, which have already been adopted since 2018.

The QA step is applied to at least 10% of our total projects and is an internal step we are committed to performing on a regular basis. We believe that identifying a potential issue on time is of the essence when it comes to being a professional in the industry.