3 Steps for Translating Marketing CampaignsThis 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

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gone into producing the original text. It also includes clarification on branded terms that should

stay in English or have pre-determined translations.

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

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