Well I hope so, because that is exactly what we have tried to do this year.  I am a great believer in using real transcreation examples when discussing the finer points of international marketing communications and culture. So that is why we have incorporated some common idioms into our Christmas 2011 challenge.

We all use clichés and idiom everyday, peppering our normal conversation with metaphors and sayings. This is a common human trait and indeed an inherent aspect of the evolution of language. How often do you hear phrases like “let’s suck it and see” or “let’s throw mud at the wall and see what sticks“. Never? Then what about “finding a needle in a haystack” or ” a snowball in hell“?

Over a glass of mulled wine, of a winter’s evening, get a group of family or friends together and see how many clichés, proverbs and sayings you can squeeze into a conversation. It’s fun and you will no doubt be amazed at how many you can come up with. But then try explaining to your friends exactly what you mean by things such as letting sleeping dogs lie. What do dogs have to do with the price of butter anyway?

We trawled the deepest, darkest depths of our staff’s linguistic expertise and asked them to come up with as many sayings in their own language as possible. Then we translated them literally into English. Can you work out what the equivalent saying should be in English by solving the puzzle? There will be a prize for the top scorer.

Culture and environment

Culture and environment can directly influence idiom. Take the following euphemisms to imply someone is stupid:

“He’s dumber than a box of rocks” and “He’s as thick as two short planks“. No prizes for guessing which one is British English and which one is American. Whereas, if you are from Oz, you are more likely just to say “He’s thick as a brick“.

Many creative treatments do mine clichés and euphemisms for ideas and often use puns and a play on words to create an impact. And why not? The role of translation and transcreation is not to strangle creativity at birth. However,  it does require a good brief, attention to detail and imagination to ensure a suitable and appropriate local version is found. For example, look at the following US English alternatives for “all talk, no action“:

• all booster, no payload
• all hat, no cattle
• all foam, no beer
• all hammer, no nail
• all icing, no cake
• all lime and salt, no tequila.
• all missile, no warhead
• all shot, no powder
• all sizzle, no steak
• all wax and no wick

Some of these alternatives would clearly not resonate with vegetarians, teetotallers, pacifists and non-rednecks.

On that note I sign off in anticipation of tasty mince pies, rich and moist Christmas pudding, a turkey with four breasts and six legs, a  solution to the euro crisis and other such miracles in 2012!

Short link – http://transcreationblog.net/?p=866

Click to watch Fiat 500 Seduction

This high-trending viral ad for the Fiat 500 Abarth needs absolutely no translation, even though the monologue is in Italian. The target demographic is very clearly boys.  Entitled “You’ll never forget the first time you see one “, the ad plays on every heterosexual young man’s fantasy, and probably the nostalgic older man’s as well.

The buzz started mid-week on 14th November, peaking on the 17th but not tailing off until the weekend. What is really interesting is how this buzz was reflected in language, as can be seen in this graphic.

Not surprisingly, the Italians  picked it up quite quickly, but there was also sizeable interest in Romania and Spain. While these two countries share Latin as a common language root, I  doubt whether language was the basis of the appeal. Indeed, as it turns out, the model/actress is actually Romanian – Catrinel Menghia.  Maybe she’s famous in Spain as well?

According to PRNewswire, “this digital spot made its debut at the 2011 Los Angeles Auto Show to hundreds of journalists and then was posted to the FIAT brand’s YouTube site. Without having ever been aired on television or cable networks, it has rapidly spread through the web and gained global attention.”

Fiat 500 Abarth – Seduction

If you want to know what she’s saying, see below, but in my opinion subtitling or a voice-over on this ad would be doubly redundant, although I notice the blogosphere was quickly filled with people (guys) asking what she was saying –  Oye vay!

“What are you looking at? Huh!? What are you looking at?! Are you undressing me with your eyes? Poor guy… you cannot help it? Is your heart beating? Is your head spinning? Do you feel lost thinking that I could be yours forever?”

Actually, the car does look rather better in the flesh than it appears in this photograph, but then again, the objective of the ad is to sell the cachet now and the car later.

Clearly, retaining the Italian without subtitles can work for Western Europe and probably most Latin countries. However, for markets like China, Japan, Russia and the Gulf, some sensitive and creative subtitling will be necessary. But even in these markets, the whole Italian character of the brand would be lost without the Italian voice and gestures.  Even if the actress is Romanian.

You betcha! Once again, China proves that it is not a homogeneous part of the global marketplace.

Which car brand has the most cachet in China?

Well, according to a recent article in the New York Times, unless you are a retired pensioner, it is best to avoid a Mercedes-Benz in China if you want to make a statement of subtle and assured power. To add insult to injury for German car makers, despite improving sales, the BMW has acquired a reputation as the car for the arrogant and rash, rather than as a status symbol of the successful, upwardly mobile business executive of the West.

On the other hand, General Motor’s Buick brand – largely unknown outside of North America and once acknowledged by GM as ‘damaged’ in the US – has amazingly positioned itself in China as a top-tier luxury car.

However, in a country under the firm control of the political elite underpinned by a Byzantine bureaucracy, any brand bestowed with the patronage of all-powerful government officials is likely to be the one with the highest cachet.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, if you are an up-and-coming bureaucrat in China, the only car for you is the Audi A6 – Jeremy Clarkson, eat your hat!

Finally, a recent post on Sina Weibo, China’s most popular social media site, appositely sums up the current state of car demographics:

“A gathering of Mercedes indicates a get-together for old folks”, the writer said. “A group of BMWs means young nouveau riche are about to run someone over and have a party; several Audis, and you know it’s a government meeting.”

So don’t forget when promoting your product in a new locale, make sure your brief clearly and explicitly identifies your target demographic. And don’t make assumptions about their behaviour based on domestic perceptions.

Remember, any narrative-type content will require adaptation: “Clint, driving his ’98 Caddy down Highway 101, clutching a Starbuck’s latte in one hand with ZZ-Top blasting out of his iPod” will need a light touch to ensure that the message gets across in Shanghai, Novosibirsk or Doha.

Now that needs transcreation!

In my company – Wordbank – and many other places, real transcreation is quietly going on every day, often unheralded.  However, it is not a mass-market offering that should be applied to every marketing or advertising campaign element every time. Certainly it should not be confused with or applied interchangeably with what tends to be called ‘marketing translation’ or even with ‘translation’.

Transcreation is a service that should be applied with the same selectivity that is typically applied to Business Class travel, luxury hotel accommodation or choosing to use a toll road rather than the public highway.

For us normal human beings, not yet in the Abramovich or Soros class, there will always be times when we have sound reasons for using any one of the above, but sparingly rather than every day. The obvious exception would be a pure play advertising company where 90% of output is creative, making transcreation a necessity for any international activity.

So how, then, should we define ‘marketing translation’? What is its scope and when should it be applied?

All marketing campaigns have a marketing communications (marcoms) objective, usually couched in terms of getting a specific demographic to take a desired action as a result of seeing a marcom piece. For example: call a number, subscribe to a newsletter, select one product or brand over another.

What we buy and how we buy it is very rarely a logical decision-making process. It is influenced by our psychology, previous experiences, awareness and brand perception among other things.

For most purchases outside of the Snickers and soap powder arena, there is a common buying cycle which broadly requires more detail as we approach the point of purchase. Starting with, ” Oh what a funky, cool brand Apple is” down to, “Do I really want to splurge my hard-earned cash on an iPad2 with 3G or shall I go for the new Kindle? Or I could just upgrade my laptop“. The final decision requires answers to several questions not satisfied by a punchy tag line (apart from for the raging, must-have-the-latest-gadget freak).

Gordon’s Guidelines for the transcreation decision

So here are my guidelines on how to decide when to use transcreation for international marketing communications:

1. Slogans – You should transcreate slogans, banners, ad headlines, tag lines and strap lines, which are all high visibility and need to generate an impact – often an emotional one and where the response is highly subjective. For example, McDonald’s is running a series of coffee promotions on UK TV channels which have a hint of Starbucks about them. The creative itself is pretty good and not ‘cheesy’, but the inevitable McDonald’s tag line “I’m lovin’ it” and the whistle at the end of the advert is very American, very cheesy and grates on my more sober, British nerves. In other words, it provokes a very subjective response on my part. I know they won’t, but maybe McDonald’s should consider transcreating “I’m lovin’ it”.
2. Body Text – After the glitzy, catchy, compelling headline comes the descriptive body text, which must expand, explain and substantiate the claims made by the tag lines and headlines. This copy may run to a few hundred words and requires idiomatic, resonant ‘marketing’ translation. It is also important that consistency in messaging is maintained over the many instances where the same message may appear across marketing collateral and content. This requires a process, a well-established approach and relevant, skilled resources. A sound marketing translation based on well-established style guides and approved local terminology should suffice 80% of the time.
3. Disclaimers and Ts & Cs – Most advertising, offers and promotions also involve some informational, technical or legal copy such as technical features, where to buy, prices, discounts, how to select the right option etc. This requires an accurate, often literal translation combined with appropriate terminology and is generally covered by the basic translation-proofreading service you get when you buy ‘translation’ or post-edited machine translation.

It is never a good idea to confuse any of the above or to try to do category 1 with category 3 resources and processes.

A few additional categories:

- Jokes always need careful transcreation and may not be culturally appropriate, so be prepared for a major dilution of your side-splitters.

- Film dialogue tracks, poetry and lyrics require a very special talent in excess of transcreation.

- Video/TV ad  scripts require a combination of a good transcreation and proper, skilled voice-over talent.

If you have any questions feel free to contact me – I’m the one on the left.

Finally, as the old saying goes: a picture paints a thousand words. Therefore, to better make my point, I have added a full new page to the blog site wherein ‘real examples’ of transcreation in action can be found.

Clearly someone, somewhere did not do any copy/concept testing in key markets before going ahead with the launch creative etc.

Given the less than enthusiastic response to the iPhone 4s, there is a touch of irony in things going slightly bottom up!

It also rams home the message of just how quickly global social media can latch on to ‘bad news’ and threaten to rain on a major brand’s parade.

Concept or copy testing is one of the key aspects of our Conquest transcreation service. One of the typical questions that comprises the analysis part of the service is, rather appropriately:

“Is the style, meaning or approach of the product campaign suitable for your country? If not, what is wrong?” 

Now, if only they had asked that question of Japan!

For the interested among you, here is the definition of “siri” and its Kanji character 尻 in Japanese.

Check out the full post on Technolog on msnbc.om  and follow WordbankLtd on Twitter to keep up to date with transcreation and other global communications happenings.

Browsing Twitter feeds to see if transcreation was a subject that was generating any interesting debate or insight, I  was quickly disappointed. Was I expecting too much of the micro-blogosphere?

Yes, there is a #transcreation tag and a #copywriter, but it didn’t take much effort to find out how boring and repetitive said transcreation tweets were. Well, the ones that I could find.

You can be creative and funny

Surely if lawyers are connected to the law and tennis professionals to tennis, the  transcreative people should be, well, sort of CREATIVE? A modicum of creativity, innovation or even imagination?

Don’t we owe it to the world to practise what we preach?

With barely a second’s hesitation I sent out the call, and lo! a hero emerged from the depths of the blogosphere. There is a small but hopefully not lone outpost of creativity attached to transcreation.
Get thee to Twitter and follow @eltcblogger and #transcreationjokes for a bit of a larf!

Here’s one to get you started:

 ”Hear about the dyslexic who thought transcreation was an art director with gender issues? Boom boom!” 

Well, actually, no they don’t!

The world is dominated by local search engines and from an international online marketing point of view, this is important to understand. Google does cover a large portion of the world, but markets such as Asia are dominated by various local search engines rather than the “global” players.

Want to find out who these local Asian search engines are and stay in touch with what’s happening in the world of multilingual or international search marketing?

Then follow Wordbank’s Mark Burns’ news and views on the Global SEM blog.

Firstly, the word ‘transcreation’ – it’s not new

At Wordbank we have been providing this service since the mid ’90s – our Conquest™ service was launched in 1997 specifically to offer a better way of adapting creative copy to different local markets. Indeed, I first heard the term back in 1996. It was coined by a European advertising agency executive laboriously making a point about how marketing should be properly adapted rather than just translated.

Admittedly, at the time I, like many, considered it an ugly mongrel of a word and the advertising executive in question worthy of immediate membership of “pseuds corner”.

However, I believe that the real issue here is neither one of semantics nor of different flavours of translation. What it is really about is how much value a particular company puts on customer service and the customer experience in practice.

How many times have you heard a major international company say how much they value their customers and that excelling at customer service is part of their corporate DNA?

Clear, effective communication

Actions speak louder than words

Clear, effective communication is an essential part of customer service.

Take the hotel business, for example. Customer service is essential: our first and last contact with any hotel will most probably be with the reception/front desk staff. Before we even get near the product we have been sold (i.e. a bed for the night), we must run the service gauntlet of online booking and negotiate our way through the potentially treacherous waters of check-in.

Consumer experience... (Cross at the crossing, Brazil)

I often wonder if hotel staff experience the same fear and trepidation that I feel as I approach the front desk of a strange hotel anywhere. Does that sharp smile and equally sharp uniform disguise an accident waiting to happen or a warm, welcoming, kind human being keen to pander to all my jet-lagged, stressed-out executive needs?

Whatever happens, the outcome is categorized, filed and ranked in my personal database of experienced brand value logged against the probability of a future return visit. In other words, duly noted.

During the summer I have had several hotel experiences, variously in Sicily, Milan and Denver. Somewhat surprisingly considering America’s celebrated customer service culture, my overall experiences were better in Sicily and Milan than Denver, although I have lost count of the times I have stayed in the Denver hotel in question. To put it bluntly, their CRM system should have been blaring ‘regular customer, retain at all costs’ when I checked-in. So something failed.

Yes, I was ready to quit, never to return

Yes, my Denver minibar fridge failed miserably in its mission to refrigerate and despite informing reception no less than three times, nothing was done about it. I just gave up, did not use the minibar and logged three large black marks in the aforementioned mental database.

The Sicilian and Italian staff, however, were just plain helpful and considerate, despite minimal English in the Sicilian case. I left feeling well-disposed to the staff and the company in both instances.

All very well, but how does this relate to transcreation?

The whole thing comes down to brand EXPECTATION versus brand EXPERIENCE.  And in today’s world, that often means online brand experience as much as face-to-face or voice contact.

We do not need a management consultant to point out that the arbiter of satisfaction is as much the overall level of service we receive as the quality of the product itself. For instance, Hugo Boss is a designer of world renown, a premium brand and one I rated. However, two recent and disastrous experiences with their online store mean that I will think twice about going down that route again and indeed my perception of the whole brand has been sorely dented.

Does the level of service match the message?

On the other hand, love or hate Ryanair, you are never left in any doubt about the (basic) level of service to expect and the actual brand experience tends to live up to that (or down to it, depending on your perspective). The staff may irritate you with their constant sales banter but equally they are helpful, friendly and have a sense of humour. Ryanair’s messaging is clear and effective – you definitely get what you pay for.

The message vs. the level of service

A lot is talked about machine translation, translation technologies, shared translation memories etc., all good stuff for driving down the cost of translation to the lowest level. But what message does that send to your customers? Is the quality of content on your website, in an email, on the landing page, in the sales or channel training modules good, or just good enough to make sense?

How happy are we really when we tick the satisfactory or average box for level of service? We are certainly not delighted, or going to recommend to a friend or enthuse on Twitter. As for the post-order customer service I received after calling Hugo Boss, I have had more success talking to my kitchen wall. And now I’m telling you about it.

Posted on the UK Guardian website 25 July 2011

Any company promoting a value proposition which includes or implies a commitment to a high level of service and/or product quality is surely creating a market expectation that company communications will reflect that commitment locally rather than being just good enough.

With translation technology virtually open to all (thanks to Google), is there not an opportunity for the smarter company to differentiate by making their website and online communications in general more stimulating, interesting and sensitive to the local audience/target demographic?

Search engines aside, surely the customer or prospect is the prime target for websites and online marketing?

Nike, BMW, Hugo Boss. All of them make clear brand promises, as does Michael O’Leary at Ryanair, now the biggest airline in the UK (in the 12 months ending June 2011, Ryanair carried 75.5 million passengers). He makes it clear that Ryanair wants to be the biggest and the cheapest, and the quality of customer service correlates with the price you pay.

How do you want the local market to perceive your brand? Veering towards a Michael O’Leary or a Hugo Boss?

Etna seen from Taormina

I am fortunate to have spent the past week or so on holiday near Syracuse, on the eastern coast of Sicily. The weather has been very changeable, but far from chilly. What is staggering is that along with the sun, sea, sand and tourists, you are surrounded, everywhere you turn, by ancient history. The evidence of past civilizations is ubiquitous. Crossing the bridge into Ortygia, the original Greek island settlement of Syracuse, you virtually fall straight into the Temple of Apollo. Well, what’s left of it. Turn around and cast your eyes upwards and you see the Greek Theatre, the foundations of the huge, sacrificial altar of Hieron II (241BC onwards) and, finally, the impressive Roman Amphitheatre.

Language is everywhere

Language is everywhere you look: dedications and graffiti in ancient Greek and Latin, religious Latin, modern Italian and Sicilian too. I finally had to admit that those five years of Latin at school weren’t a waste of time after all.
Yes, they do speak Italian here in Sicily. I know that sounds like stating the obvious but they also speak Sicilian or various dialects thereof. However, when it comes to ranking one of the most rich and historically diverse languages, modern Sicilian has to be way up there near the top of anyone’s list. Exploring Sicilian is a bit like entering a linguistic crime scene with clues, debris and contamination from more cultures than you can shake a stick at. This paragraph from Wikipedia nicely sums up why this is so:
“Because Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean and virtually all Mediterranean peoples have passed through it (Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, French, Aragonese, Spanish, Italians), Sicilian displays the rich and varied influence of several languages on its lexical stock and grammar. Such languages include Greek, Latin, Arabic, Norman, Lombard, Provençal, German, Catalan, French, Spanish and of course Italian, to say nothing of prehistoric influence from the island’s pre-Indo-European inhabitants. The very earliest influences, visible in Sicilian to this day, exhibit both prehistoric Mediterranean elements and prehistoric Indo-European elements, and occasionally a blending of both (Giarizzo 1989 and Ruffino 2001).”

Speak Sicilian

The following few examples of Sicilian, with their Italian and English equivalents, will give you a flavour of the Sicilian language:

fà[ci]ri na bedda fiùra = fare una bella figura (to make a good impression)
vinu = vino (wine)
òmu = uomo (man)
fìmmina = donna (woman)
dabbanna = l’altra parte (the other side)
docu = lì (there)
vussìa = Lei (you – polite form)
Accura! = Stai attento! (Be careful!)
iddu = lui (him/he)
idda = lei (her/she)
Cu paja prima, pistìa li pisci fitùsi = Chi paga prima, mangia il pesce puzzolente (He who pays before seeing the goods gets cheated – or literally: Who pays before eats smelly fish)

The Sicilian market or locale

Sicily is an excellent holiday island, with the contrast of craggy coasts, sun-drenched beaches and wooded mountains. Not to mention the portentous, vineyard-ringed and ski slope-adorned mass of Etna. But on your way to that excellent fish restaurant by the harbour, take time to notice the classically steepled catholic church that was once a mosque, added to an old Christian church built on a Greek temple. Not far below the surface you will find a rich and intriguing mélange of cultures.

In terms of marketing and transcreation, Sicily is very definitely a separate locale with its own identity, language and culture but the vast majority of conventional marketing communications I came across was in Italian, which is what you would expect from major, mass-appeal brands.

Sicilian Cassata Cake

There is, however, an opportunity for a company wishing specifically to target the Sicilian consumer market to use the local idiom in both messaging and search marketing. Conversely, as various Sicilian words have been adopted into the Italian language, any brand wishing to convey a ‘Sicilian’ image or heritage could readily do so by using the Sicilian idiom and imagery. An example of this would be marketing a Sicilian pasta sauce or the particularly Sicilian desert of Cassata, which bears no resemblance to the ice cream confection labelled as Cassata and offered in Italian restauarants outside of Italy.

Cassata is a Sicilian word as is caruso, which means ‘boy’ and has been adopted into Italian.

These are simple examples and the underlying message is simple, too: know your market and talk to your target audience in their own language or as close as you can afford. Even better, take a trip to Catania and see for yourself.

I received an email on Tuesday 5 May from a British company called Corpdata aiming to sell me B2B marketing lists with the headline: “Accurate data killed Osama bin Laden (helped by US Special  Forces)”.

A tenuous link at best and definitely a case of jumping on the nearest and most recent bandwagon. Cheese aside, does it work from a marketing perspective?

On the one hand, I laud the speed of response and yes, the targeting is correct.  But on the other hand, how can I take it seriously? The Roquefort quotient is only increased when you note the company’s name – Corpdata. Or should that be ‘Corpsedata‘? Ouch!

Yes, folks, roll up! With our B2B marketing lists you too can be just like the US Navy Seal Team Six!

That’s a claim I would like to see them substantiate. Also, how exactly would potential clients feel about a heavily armed team of assassins dropping in through the roof? Agreed, it will have a significant impact.

(One thing that is bothering me about this whole story is, given the location of the hit, right in the middle of central Asia, not far from the border with Afghanistan and Tajikistan and some 1,500 km from the sea, why were Navy Seals first in line for the mission? Not really seal or penguin territory, is it?)

Anyway, make up your own mind: here is the prime cheddar of the day in most of its glory. Feel free to contact Corpdata to ask for a testimonial from the Seals.

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Subject: Accurate data killed Osama bin Laden (helped by US Special  Forces)

The US ‘Most Wanted List’ has seen a bit of a shake-up.

Accurate information enabled the US to target their attention on a walled compound in Abbottabad. As a direct result, the small group of people called US Navy Seal Team Six have changed the shape of the international terrorist threat. It may yet prove to be an illusion, but many people will feel safer as a result. Yet despite their evident skill and years of experience, the troops would have been powerless to act without good information.

But Al-Qaeda is still in business, and you need to be too!

Accurate information is just as vital for your marketing. You need to target the

• right people with the
• right authority in the
• right organisations

Corpdata offers you the most accurate B2B marketing data in the UK, that’s a fact!

With average data age of just 94 days, and 13 decision makers at each site, you can target the correct decision maker for your campaign.

To ensure your marketing is as effective as US Navy Seal Team Six, call us now on 01626 777400.

Corpdata – Always up to date [viz: any bandwagon, always cheesy]

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EXPECTATION versus brand EXPERIENCE.