The translation industry is changing and growing in leaps and bounds. In this age of globalization and unstoppable development of technology, the language services that go hand in hand with these innovations must grow in tandem with them in order to meet the needs of companies and producers and make new products, in any form, more accessible to consumers. To do so, the language services sector covers a range of products that are constantly updated, either by changing the nature of the tasks and adapting them to the new age or by creating new ways of understanding translation, which, far from being a mere exercise in interlinguistic correspondence, has become an important resource for intercultural mediation and the correct internationalization of goods and services. Today, translators do not simply reproduce the content of a source text in a target text, but rather they are sometimes required to meticulously research the target audience and devise localization strategies based on specific profiles and requirements, even though this means casting doubt on the effectiveness of the “raw” source materials in its translated version. In other words, the concept of translation is currently undergoing a transformation and, in certain contexts, it is becoming a creative composition and reformulation process that is closer to content creation in parallel with the originals than a task in which the source text is replicated exactly. As we have noted, this has given rise to new types of services and one that most closely matches this description is transcreation. In today’s article we will discuss this service in more detail, noting its characteristics and how it differs from translation. First, we must mention the etymology of this expression. This word is derived from the combination of the terms translation and creation. The etymological origin of the term makes its meaning very clear; it is a language service that entails creatively localizing content. Now, what “content” are we referring to, and what do we mean by “creatively”? We must first clarify that, regardless of how much it evolves, translation will always preserve its underlying interlinguistic correspondence. In other words, we will still need to translate instruction manuals into the languages of the markets that we export our goods to, we will still need word-for-word reproductions of intricate legal documents such as contracts and rulings, and we will still need interpreters that accurately transmit the speeches made by political representatives to different nations. Translation will continue to be essential, regardless of the form it takes, and it will continue to be translation as we know it. However, there are communicative contexts in which translating the content of a text does not achieve the same effect in the target audience as it did in the source audience. A translated web page may seem strange to a user of one of the languages; the target audience may not connect with a subtitled or dubbed advert broadcast abroad or may not perceive the creative potential of the original; or the translated script may seem forced once screened, even though the characters’ dialog is somewhat natural in the source script. This has made experts consider the need for a new service that does not aim to translate the more or less natural text component, but rather to transmit emotions, feelings, requirements, impressions and consumption behaviors to the audience of the target markets. As a result, transcreation professionals analyze a text and carefully study their clients’ needs, familiarize themselves with the type of product to be localized, understand the target audience and talk to the clients of the project in order to start designing the transcreation proposal, that is, whether the source text content will be interpreted correctly or not, whether it will have the desired effect, whether there is a conflicting cultural component, etc. Once all the cards are on the table, the professional can advise on the most recommended strategy, from conserving the idea of the original but implementing it differently and innovatively in the target, or correcting these small inaccuracies that were detected in the interlinguistic conversion. That is why transcreation sometimes bears very little resemblance to translation, and requires us to be original content creators in our own language while using a material in another language as a basis. Sometimes, the source material is not preserved at all in transcreation, and this is one of the main differences with translation: it does not lose sight of the source words or their meaning. Transcreation is an ideal resource for marketing, where what works in one language and culture may not do so in another language and culture. What is important is to awaken an interest in the consumer, and this is sometimes impossible with the same words and even images. This makes transcreation a service that advises on linguistic and paralinguistic issues. The professional becomes a comprehensive guide to the target culture for the client, which means that transcreation profiles must have broad cultural knowledge, a high level of imagination and inventive capacity, in addition to the language skills required of the professionals of this sector.
Therefore, clients that need to localize a product must consult agencies and freelance professionals to find out whether this type of service is the best for their needs, since there may be a more suitable solution that they may not be aware of, and it is always interesting to have all the options available in order to obtain the best results.
Ref. de la imagen: https://wallpaperaccess.com/creative
