1. 3 Steps for Translating Marketing Campaigns
This article was originally published on the Acclaro blog.
Category: Marketing
Marketing materials pose a particular challenge to companies that
want to sell their products or services to new language markets.
Some typical concerns are:
How do you ensure that your translated materials maintain
the impact of the original?
How do you name products, translate idioms and maintain consistency across languages
without having to launch brand new marketing campaigns for each market (just thinking
of all the costs — new creative, photography and production — can make a marketing
person cringe).
The answer is marketing "transcreation" — the process of linguistic and cultural translation
that makes marketing make sense whatever the target language (or languages).
Here is a quick three-step guide to generate the best marketing translations possible so your
products sell just as well in Buenos Aires as they do in Beijing or Boston.
Step 1: Assess your original campaign and content. Evaluate the goals of the campaign
and, if the campaign is already in a market, look closely at the concepts, graphics and headlines
to assess their cultural relevance and appropriateness in the target market. Selecting concepts,
copy and graphic elements that work across cultures is key to the campaign’s success.
Step 2: Hire a qualified localization team (of course we're going to advocate this!). Work
with a team that has a rich understanding of the source and target languages. Make sure the
linguists are in-country and have extensive experience with your particular industry, in addition
to exercise in transcreation itself.
Step 3: Create a transcreation brief. This document summarizes your company, product and
campaign so that all teams understand the nuances of the language and business needs. It
specifies the target audience (age, lifestyle, behavior, etc.) and the thought process that has
gone into producing the original text. It also includes clarification on branded terms that should
stay in English or have pre-determined translations.
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2. After step three, the localization team takes over and begins the translation and transcreation
process, working with you along the way to ensure the best possible, and most appropriate
marketing translation for each of your target markets.
To learn more about marketing translation and transcreation, and to see samples of how a
localization team tackles campaigns, read our article, Marketing Translation: Bridging the
Language Gap.
About Acclaro: Acclaro is an international translation and localization company that
helps the world’s leading brands succeed across cultures. We translate websites,
marketing campaigns, documents and software to give clients an authentic voice in
key language markets.
North America: 1-866-468-5106 Worldwide: +1-914-468-0222
www.acclaro.com sales@acclaro.com
Page 2: 3 Steps for Translating Marketing Campaigns Copyright © Acclaro 2012