10 Things Marketers Need to Know about Transcreation

关于创译,营销人员需要知道的10件事

2020-07-24 23:42 Lingua Greca

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The term “transcreation” describes the process of adapting content for a given target audience to make sure that it resonates with the intended effect. The process may or may not include translation. Now that we’ve shared a clear localization definition for people who are not from the localization industry, let’s take a closer look at transcreation. Here are 10 things every marketer should know about transcreation. 1. Transcreation usually (but not always) refers to marketing content. The basic goal of transcreation is to make sure that content you’re creating for a different audience resonates with your target audience similarly. Transcreation enables the campaign or content to achieve a similar impact on the target market. You can transcreate many types of materials, especially where culture plays a role. For example, one project I once worked on entailed creating sample menus for diabetic patients in the United States. In English, teaching about white bread and sliced ham might have been fine, but for Spanish, this wasn’t really what people were going to eat. The content didn’t just need to be adapted, but rather, rewritten with the original purpose in mind, of educating the patient to control their blood sugars through diet. Otherwise, the patient’s health outcomes were at stake. The idea with transcreation is that you’re not exclusively translating, and you’re not only adapting either. You’re doing more than that. In many cases, you’re rewriting from scratch to get the same concept or message across. Many definitions of transcreation will have you believe that it sits at the intersection of culture, translation, and emotion. I disagree with this. Not all transcreated content is designed to evoke an emotion, and to cast it in that light is really too limiting. In fact, very few of the transcreation projects I’ve seen in my career actually are about the emotion. Transcreation is required when the people creating the source content have a specific purpose in mind that cannot be accomplished through translation alone. For this reason, the content must be transcreated in order for it to achieve that purpose. Another project I worked on, also for an audience of Spanish speakers in the US, was for a major pharma company launching a bilingual website for a popular birth control medication. Among English-speaking women, the main value they wanted to convey was the convenience of the medication and how easy it was, less hassle for busy women. In Spanish, the company also had to consider many beliefs at play about birth control affecting fertility as well as different pressures and religious aspects to consider. As such, the goal of the campaign for English was to convey convenience, whereas the goal of the campaign in Spanish was to educate patients about the safety of the drug. In that particular project, the goal was not to replicate a similar emotion in the other market. What we had to do was actually take emotions out of the equation for a market where the topic was more likely to be a tricky one for many women. 2. Transcreation may or may not involve translators. Usually, these services are performed by a combination of native-language copywriters (also known as transcreators) and designers in the event of any design work. However, are the transcreators also translators? Not always. They might be or they might not be. Here are some of the differences: A professional translator usually has training and background in the fields of translation and localization. The translator must understand the source language well enough to ensure accuracy and completeness in the target language. A professional translator may or may not offer transcreation services, but it depends on the individual. Translators frequently, but not always, tend to specialize in certain areas, such as legal, medical, or tech. Nearly every translator can support cultural adaptation when asked to do so. It just depends on the degree of transcreation required on a given project, and whether they have experience in this area. A professional transcreator is usually a copywriter who specializes in the target language and in writing creatively in that language. Their understanding of each and every word in the source language is not really as important as their ability to achieve the desired impact in the target language, depending on how they are used and what job they are being asked to carry out. In some cases, the transcreator actually doesn’t speak the source language whatsoever. Some agencies employ people who speak the target language natively but have very limited knowledge of the source language. In some cases, they might not even look at the source text to ensure they can let their creativity fully bloom without “contamination” from the version in the source language. 3. Transcreation is billed on a per-project or hourly basis. Most commonly, transcreation is priced like the services of most marketing agencies. You’ll need to pay for the time of all the creative services folks involved. Copywriting services are usually billed by the hour, as are those of graphic designers. The more creative work your project requires, the more costly it will be. The project-based or hourly pricing model that is more common with transcreation is a really important distinction from translation. Almost every translation vendor on the planet bills for their services on a per-word basis. I’m actually not a big fan of the per-word pricing model that pervades the translation industry, because once you start digging into it, you realize that it doesn’t make much sense. Not all words have equal value, and no translator actually translates “by the word” but “by the unit of meaning” instead. Words in isolation have no value when translated. It’s almost like compensating a programmer based on the lines of code they write, or paying a designer based on the number of virtual brush strokes, as opposed to the quality of their end product. 4. Transcreation services can get pricey. Most transcreation projects cost a lot more than “straight translation projects” do — ones that have minimal copywriting and creative work requirements. Of course, you can get transcreation services from some translation providers, and some might even charge you by the word for it. But if you want a good end product, you will likely be paying more than you’d pay if you “just” request translation on its own. Remember, creative work simply costs more. Human creativity can’t be automated. So, if you need highly creative copywriting, you’ll need to pay for it as if you would pay for any other highly creative service. 5. Transcreation projects often include translation services. Here’s the confusing part. Transcreation projects might include translation services. In fact, in my experience they frequently do. For example, let’s say that you have a web page that describes a software product designed to help consumers do their personal taxes. Perhaps the tagline is something like, “Taxes, without all the effort.” But the body text is descriptive and simply explains how the software works and. what its benefits are. The more creative the content, the more you’ll need transcreation. The drier and more descriptive it is, the easier it will be to translate and the more likely you can use “regular” translation for it. However, don’t let this tempt you to dilute your source content. One mistake I’ve seen is that when marketers finally understand this, they try to neutralize their English message. Don’t remove the impact of your words in English! You might be making it easier to translate, but you’ll be diminishing the effect in all languages if you totally remove the zing from the English. If you really want creative services on some parts of your project, make sure to specify that this is what you want. Ask for the project to be quoted to include creative services. 6. Many marketers don’t realize they need transcreation. Very often, marketers will send a project over requesting translation and don’t even think about the fact that much of their copy might actually require transcreation or creative adaptation. Just remember that if your project has certain elements to it that are highly creative, you’re likely going to require this service. A good rule of thumb is to think about how long it took you or how much care and thought went into your copy in English. If the copy took some consideration and creativity, it’s likely going to require transcreation. Most advertising copy will require it, for example. But in the world of digital advertising, it really depends on the copy. Sometimes, paid ads are intentionally designed to look like organic results. It’s helpful when the translation provider knows this, and understands the marketer’s goal. 7. Transcreation takes longer to plan and pull off than translation. If it took your marketing agency two weeks to come up with the right product positioning statements and refine them down to one page, don’t expect your translation agency (or freelancers or internal team) to turn that page around in one day. Human translators can deliver up to 2000 to 2500 words per day as the industry standard (the higher end of the range is for languages that use Roman characters; the lower end is for languages that don’t). But that doesn’t apply to most marketing content, because marketing content is more likely to include copy that requires transcreation. It’s much more time-consuming to deliver. 8. Transcreation is often used as a synonym of “free translation” and an antonym of “literal translation.” Translation happens on a spectrum. On the one hand, you’ll see translation that is extremely literal and word-for-word. Machine translation is notorious for this, although thanks to neural MT technologies, it’s improving. On the other side of the spectrum, you’ll find translation that gives the translator a lot of creative freedom, which is sometimes referred to as free translation. The idea of free translation (or maybe it should be freeing translation or “translation that frees the translator”) is in the vein of transcreation. But in my opinion, it’s not entirely the same thing, but the two bleed together at the end of the day. In academic theory and the field of translation studies, “free translation” is meant to be similar to transcreation. But out there in the business world, no one really talks about “free translation” unless they are talking about machine translation, in which case they mean “free of charge.” So yes, in an industry that is designed to enable communication, transcreation has a synonym that implies it doesn’t cost anything, even though it’s actually one of the most expensive types of translation. This is what can lead to a lot of confusing conversations like this: Marketers are right to doubt translation agencies that can’t clearly explain this stuff. It’s confusing, and our industry doesn’t do the greatest job of making itself easy to understand. We trip everyone up, including ourselves, with our own jargon. 9. There’s a lot of debate about transcreation and what it means. I wish marketers did not need to care about this, but in reality, you can’t assume that every translation agency out there really understands, or even cares about, transcreation. Most translation agencies you speak with will know what transcreation is, but they might not actually provide this service very often. So, if you really want this service, you’ll need to ask for it. Some people in the translation industry will say, “but that’s just the same as localization.” Well, not exactly. The term localization comes largely from the software industry. But with more and more digital marketers needing web localization, you can have transcreation needs within a localization project. To me, not all localization projects require transcreation, but more and more of them do. And many transcreation projects have nothing to do with localization. Often, they are for offline advertising campaigns, and there is no need to consider a user experience, which is, for me, the end goal of localization. Also, until recent years, the concept of localization marketing didn’t really exist. You’ll also hear many people say that transcreation is just another form of translation. That’s true as well, to a point. But, that’s a bit like saying “but an orca is really just a whale” is if that takes away the need for a word to refer to the orca separately and in addition to the term “whale.” Specificity does matter. Yes, transcreation is one of many linguistic services that a translation provider can offer. But it doesn’t mean we don’t need a term for it to differentiate it from other services. What concerns me about transcreation as a term is that it’s yet another example of the industry lingo that people in the translation world use, which means it’s not very inclusive language. Most marketers don’t know what it is and therefore don’t even know how to talk about it or ask for it. This isn’t their fault. Most people working in digital marketing are seeing their work unfold at a faster pace than ever. Their own profession is changing at a faster pace than ever before along with its own specialized terminology. They have very limited time for learning the jargon of another industry. This type of bridging communication gaps across two different professions takes time. Translation providers need to find more ways to reach marketers and communicate the value of translation services without shoving this jargon into their faces. 10. Transcreation helps marketers reach hearts and minds. Of all linguistic services that can help marketers really reach an audience properly, transcreation is chief among them. Transcreation is a tool that truly enables marketers to reach more hearts and minds — minds that think in another language, and hearts that beat to the rhythm of another culture. For this reason, while I don’t necessarily love the term transcreation, I do love what it enables businesses and organizations of all kinds to accomplish, for the same reason I love localization. It’s all about replicating the experience a person has when they interact with a brand, whether it’s as part of their product experience, their website experience, or simply their experience as a member of a given audience that someone is trying to reach. It’s another way to bridge gaps and get messages across, and in my opinion, a really important one for more people to know is possible. Tweet WhatsApp Email Print
创译(Transcreation)是针对特定目标受众而进行的内容再创作或调适,以确保其与预期效果达成一致的过程。该过程可能包括翻译,也可能不包括翻译。既然我们已经为那些不属于本地化行业的人提供了一个明确的本地化定义,那么让我们更深入地了解创译。以下是每一个营销人员应该知道的关于“创译”的10件事。 1.创译通常(但不总是)指的是营销内容。 创译的基本目标是确保您为其他受众创建的内容与目标受众产生相似的共鸣。 借助创译,活动或内容可以对目标市场产生类似的影响。 您可以对许多类型的材料进行创译,尤其是在文化发挥作用的内容。 例如,我曾经从事的一个项目是为美国的糖尿病患者创建样本菜单。 用英语讲授白面包和火腿片可能会很好,但是对于西班牙语,这并不是人们要吃的东西。 内容不仅需要进行修改,还应按照最初的目的进行改写,以教育患者通过饮食控制血糖。 否则,患者的健康状况将受到威胁。 创译的理念是,你不只是在翻译,也不只是在调适应。你做的不止这些。 在许多情况下,你需要从头开始重写,以便理解相同的概念或内容。 创译的许多定义会让您相信它位于文化,翻译和情感的交汇点。 我不同意这一点。 并非所有创译的内容都旨在唤起一种情感,而以这种观点来塑造它确实太局限了。 事实上,在我的职业生涯中,几乎没有什么创译项目是关于情感的。 当创建源内容的人员有一个特定目的,而仅靠翻译无法实现时,就需要进行创译。 因此,必须对内容进行创译才能实现该目的。 我为美国的一家讲西班牙语的听众做过另一个项目,是为一家大型制药公司推出的双语网站,该网站提供了流行的节育药物。 在会说英语的女性中,她们要传达的主要价值是用药的便利性和简便性,对忙碌的女性而言,十分方便。 在西班牙语中,该公司还必须考虑许多影响生育力的节育信仰,以及不同的压力和宗教因素。 因此,英语宣传运动的目的是为了提供方便,而西班牙语宣传运动的目的是告诉服药者了解药物的安全性。 在那个特定的项目中,目标不是在其他市场复制类似的情感。 我们所要做的实际上是把情感剔除出来,因为这个话题对许多女性来说更可能是一个棘手的话题。 2.创译可能涉及译者,也可能不涉及译者。 通常,在进行任何设计工作时,这些服务都是由语言撰稿人(也称为创译者)和设计师共同执行的。 但是,创译者也是译者吗? 并不总是。 他们可能是,也可能不是。 以下是一些区别: 专业的翻译通常在翻译和本地化领域具有培训和背景。 译者必须充分理解源语言,以确保目标语言的准确性和完整性。 专业的翻译人员可能会也可能不会提供创译服务,但这取决于个人。 译员经常(但并非总是)倾向于专门研究某些领域,例如法律,医学或技术领域。 当要求翻译时,几乎每个翻译人员都可以支持文化适应。 这仅取决于给定项目所需的创译程度,以及他们是否在这一领域有经验。 专业的创译者通常是一名撰稿人,专门研究目标语言并以该语言创造性地写作。 他们对源语言中每个单词的理解并不像在目标语言中达到预期效果的能力那么重要,这取决于它们的使用方式和要求执行的工作。 在某些情况下,创译者实际上根本不会说源语言。 一些代理商雇用的人会说本国语言,但对源语言的了解非常有限。 在某些情况下,他们甚至可能不会查看源文本,以确保他们可以充分发挥自己的创造力,而不会受到源语言版本的“限制”。 3.创译按项目或小时计费。 最常见的情况是,像大多数营销机构的服务一样,对转创作进行定价。 您需要支付所有涉及创意服务的时间。 文案写作服务通常按小时计费,平面设计师也是如此。 您的项目需要的创意工作越多,成本就越高。 基于项目或小时的定价模式在创译中更为常见,这是与翻译真正重要的区别。 全球几乎每一个翻译供应商都是按字数收费的。 我其实并未深入了解翻译行业的按词定价模式,因为一旦开始深入挖掘,你就会意识到该模式没有太多意义。 并非所有单词都具有同等的价值,没有译者实际翻译“按单词”而是按“含义单位”翻译。 孤立的单词在翻译时没有任何价值。 这几乎就像是根据程序员编写的代码来补偿程序员,或者根据虚拟笔触的数量(而不是最终产品的质量)向设计师付款。 4.创译服务可能会变得很昂贵。 大多数创译项目的成本要比“直译项目”高得多,直译项目的文案撰写和创造性工作要求最少。 当然,您可以从某些翻译提供商那里获得创译服务,有些甚至可以按字数收费。 但是,如果您想要一款优质的最终产品,你可能会付出更多,那么您可能会付出比仅“自行”请求翻译价格更高的价格。 请记住,创造性工作的成本更高。 人的创造力无法实现自动化。 因此,如果您需要极富创意的文案,则需要像为其他任何极富创意的服务那样付费。 5.创译项目往往包括翻译服务。 这令人困惑。 创译项目可能包括翻译服务。 实际上,以我的经验,他们经常这样做。 例如,假设您有一个网页,描述了旨在帮助消费者缴纳个人税款的软件产品。 也许标语是“无需付出任何努力的税收”。 但是正文是描述性的,仅说明软件的工作方式以及好处。 内容越有创意,就越需要创译。 内容越枯燥,说明性越强,翻译起来就越容易,并且您更有可能对其使用“常规”翻译。 但是,请不要以此忽略源内容。 我看到的一个错误是,当营销人员最终理解这一点时,他们试图抵消其英语信息。 不要消除英语单词的影响! 您可能会更轻松地进行翻译,但是如果您完全取消了英语中的字词,则会降低所有语言的效果。 如果您确实希望在项目的某些部分上使用创意服务,请确保指定您想要的。 要求引用该项目以包括创意服务。 6.许多营销者没有意识到他们需要创译。 营销人员通常会在请求翻译时发送项目,甚至根本没有考虑到事实——他们的营销内容实际上可能需要创译或创造性调适。 请记住,如果您的项目具有某些极富创意的元素,则可能需要创译服务。 一个很好的经验法则是,想想你花了多长时间,或者花了多少精力和心思在英文文案。 如果文案考虑了一些因素和创造力,则很可能需要创译。 例如,大多数广告文案都需要创译。 但在数字广告领域,创译实际上取决于文案。 有时,付费广告被故意设计为看起来像自然结果。 当翻译提供商知道这一点并了解营销商的目标时,这将很有帮助。 7.与翻译相比,创译需要更长的时间来计划和完成。 如果你的营销代理商花了两周的时间才想出正确的产品定位声明,并将其细化到一页纸上,那么不要指望你的翻译代理商(或自由译者或内部团队)能在一天内把这一页内容翻完。 人工译者每天最多可以提供2000到2500个字作为行业标准(该范围的上限是使用罗马字符的语言;下限是不使用罗马字符的语言)。 但这并不适用于大多数营销内容,因为营销内容更可能包含需要创译的内容。 交付要花费很多时间。 8.创译常被用作“意译”的同义词和“直译”的反义词。 翻译存在波动。 一方面,存在直译和字对字翻译。 机器翻译因此而臭名昭著,尽管有了神经机器翻译,它正在改善升级。 另一方面,翻译给译者很大的创作自由,这有时被称为意译。 意译的思想(或者是释放翻译或“释放翻译者的翻译”)与创译息息相关。 但是我认为这不完全是同一回事,但是两者存在一定的联系。 在学术理论和翻译研究领域,“意译”的含义与创译相似。 但是在商业世界中,除非有人谈论机器翻译,否则没有人真正谈论“意译”,在这种情况下,它们的意思是“免费翻译”。 因此,是的,在一个旨在实现交流的行业中,创译具有一个同义词,即尽管它实际上是最昂贵的翻译类型之一,但它并不需要花任何钱。 这可能令人困惑,如下所示: 营销人员有权质疑无法明确解释这些内容的翻译公司。 这令人困惑,并且我们的行业在使自己易于理解方面并没有做出最大的努力。 我们用自己的行话绊倒了每个人,包括我们自己。 9.关于创译及其意义,有很多争论。 我希望营销人员不必关心这一点,但实际上,您不能假设每个翻译公司都真正了解甚至关心创译。 与您交谈的大多数翻译公司都知道什么是创译,但实际上他们可能并不经常提供这项服务。 因此,如果您真的想要此服务,则需要做出要求。 翻译行业的一些人会说,“但那只是和本地化一样。”嗯,不完全是。 本地化这个术语很大程度上来自于软件行业。 但是随着越来越多的数字营销人员需要web本地化,您可以在本地化项目中有创译的需求。 对我来说,并不是所有的本地化项目都需要创译,但越来越多的项目都是这样做的。 而且很多创译项目都与本地化无关。 通常,它们是用于线下广告活动,而不需要考虑用户体验,对我来说,这是本地化的最终目标。 而且,直到最近几年,本地化营销的概念才真正出现。 您还会听到很多人说,创译只是另一种翻译形式。 在某种程度上也是如此。 但是,这有点像说“但是逆戟鲸实际上只是一条鲸鱼”,这是因为它消除了除“鲸鱼”一词之外还需要单独引用逆戟鲸这个词的需要。 具体性确实很重要。 是的,创译是翻译提供商可以提供的许多语言服务之一。 但这并不意味着我们不需要一个术语就可以将其与其他语言服务分开。 让我担心的是,术语“创译”是翻译界人士使用的另一个行业术语,这意味着它不是一种很有包容性的语言。 大多数营销人员不知道创译是什么,因此甚至不知道如何对其进行谈论或要求。 这不是他们的错。 大多数从事数字营销工作的人看到他们的工作以前所未有的速度发展。 他们自己的专业及其专业术语正在以前所未有的速度变化。 他们只有很少的时间来学习另一个行业的行话。 弥合两个不同行业之间的这种沟通鸿沟需要时间。 翻译提供者需要找到更多的方法来接触营销人员并传达翻译服务的价值,而又不要把这种行话硬塞给他们。 10.创译帮助营销人员触及心灵。 在可以帮助营销人员正确地吸引受众的所有语言服务中,创译是其中的主要内容。 创译是一种工具,可以真正使营销人员接触到更多的人和心灵——用另一种语言思考的心灵,以及跟随另一种文化节奏跳动的心灵。 因此,虽然我不一定喜欢“创译”一词,但我确实喜欢创译能让各种企业和组织都能完成的工作,出于同样的原因,我也喜欢本地化。 这完全是要重现一个人与品牌互动时所获得的体验,无论是作为产品体验,网站体验的一部分,还是仅仅是他们试图吸引某个特定受众群体的体验。 这是弥合差距和传达信息的另一种方式,我认为,让更多的人知道这一点非常重要。 推文 什么软件 电子邮件 打印

以上中文文本为机器翻译,存在不同程度偏差和错误,请理解并参考英文原文阅读。

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