A “creative” translation

Maybe you’ve been there.

You’re abroad and you see an advert on the television. Sometimes they are funny but strangely they are in no way persuasive.

Why is this?

Because the advertisers are talking to their target audience which, generally speaking, doesn’t include you. The same thing happens with texts, particularly marketing and, obviously, advertising texts. They are directed at a specific target. This is why, when translating them, it is necessary to adopt a specific approach. We call this approach transcreation (creative translation).

This concept obviously has nothing to do with invention. Quite the contrary. Transcreation is carried out by professional translators who, having read and absorbed a text, then rewrite it in their own native language, maintaining all the nuances and references, sometimes implicit, contained in the original. Adapting it to the marketing levers or sensibilities of their country. Because to have the same effect on the final reader, the text must be adapted to the context. With “creativity”.