Shrink-wrapped, instant global website – a worrying trend?
By Gordon Husbands | International marcoms, MSEM, Transcreation | One comment so far
I have noticed some rather strange localization offers on the web recently, various companies promoting ‘ instant global websites‘ , ‘windows on the world’ – all on the cheap, of course. Is this a new phenomenon or just something I had not spotted before? (I would welcome any sane input on this.)
To quote one example from many: “Now for less than $5,000 US, you can have close to 90% of the world’s web visitors find you when they search for your keywords in their native language. The Window to the World page will then lead them to the rest of your website.”
Festive Greetings – Tricky Transcreation
By Gordon Husbands | Cultural sensitivity, Transcreation | No comment yet
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Well, it’s nearly Christmas again. Or is it?
Yes, if you live in North America, Oz, Kiwi-land or the UK and bits of Western Europe it is, but outside of that it all goes to Greenland in a handcart. Strictly speaking, of course, Christmas does not exist for the majority of the world’s population, but that doesn’t stop bedecked fir trees from being lit up in Dubai or Hong Kong. The Russians still stick to the archaic calendar and celebrate Christmas after New Year’s Eve, and everyone else. And so it goes.
Advertise in Russian or Pay the Penalty!
By Gordon Husbands | Cultural sensitivity, Transcreation | No comment yet
Moscow Times: words such as “sale”, “discount” and “free Wi-Fi”, which regularly appear in advertisements and signage in Moscow, are breaking the law. According to the Moscow Times, “The Federal Anti-Monopoly Service is planning to expand a crackdown on advertising using foreign words, with initial hearings in a spate of recent cases expected this week”.
They may think it's English but it looks like Italian!
In a recent case, the unfortunate owner of Japanese fast-food chain Yaposha got in to trouble for putting up a billboard that said “Happy New Menu” with the words “Happy” and “New” spelled out in English on a building facade. Other recent ‘outrageous’ examples were the use of “New Collection” and “Halloween”.
Хэллоуин is the word for Halloween, which, if you can read Cyrillic, is a straight transliteration of Halloween. There is no Russian equivalent of “All hallows’ e’en”, or the evening that dead spirits come back to walk the earth for one night. Although I wonder how many western kids actually know any more than that it’s a night when you can dress up in a scary outfit and go ‘trick or treating’. Yet another bourgeois, capitalist import adopted by teenage New Russians.
Adwords Translation – an oxymoron?
By Gordon Husbands | International marcoms, MSEM, Transcreation | 3 responses so far
Good question. While the two words are not quite a full-blown oxymoron, there is an element of conflict if not contradiction.Can or should Adwords be translated or is there a better way?
Search marketing is big and commands big spend in companies large and small with the demand for search analysts reaching the levels that html programmers achieved in the 90s. While the US market clearly leads the global field in terms of the adoption and sophistication of search marketing techniques, international brands are hungry to generate similar improvements in lead-generation and conversion across all their major markets, particularly the growing or more resilient ones.
MT meets Transcreation – not the clash of Titans
By Gordon Husbands | International marcoms, Transcreation | 5 responses so far
The GALA conference plenary session on 11 May started with an MT bang and ended with a donkey wallop! Entitled “The Risks and Rewards of Machine Translation”, the subject matter was always going to delight and irritate in equal measure – strong emotions were stirred. Dion Wiggins of Asia Online, taking full advantage of his significant stage presence, launched into an energetic justification of MT as the natural pinnacle of the Darwinian evolution of translation.
Dion suggested, as you might expect, that the MT spinning jenny, rather than putting the skilled weavers of translation out of a job, would create a whole new, expanding industry surrounding the core commodity of MT.
STOP PRESS: New Transcreation Survey due out
By Gordon Husbands | Transcreation | No comment yet
I recently participated in an extensive Transcreation survey being run by Common Sense Advisory of Lowell, Mass. in the US and I am reliably informed that their report is due out end of this month (March).
While I am honoured to have been included that’s not the news. What is interesting is that Transcreation is becoming a serious topic (but hopefully not without its humorous side) outside of the world of international advertising. Major international companies, Ad. Agencies and a variety of Language Service Providers have all been consulted – so we can expect a broad church of views
I will be very interested to see what CSA conclude and you can guarantee that some debate will ensue.
Particularly as I note a large number of other translation vendors that suddenly have something to say about ‘transcreation’ on their websites. It’s fine jumping on the bandwagon but the question is can you hold the tune?
Transcreation and Centralization
By Gordon Husbands | International marcoms, Transcreation | No comment yet
Transcreation - a Trojan Horse for centralization?
Is transcreation just a Trojan horse used by Global VPs of Marketing to wrest global campaign production responsibility away from the countries where they will be executed?
I guess the answer depends on how paranoid you are or how dictatorial your VP of Marketing is. My own view is that in the present competitive, budget constrained environment, both transcreation and centralization have individual merit when considering the best approach to global marketing campaign production and execution.
First and foremost transcreation requires an intimate knowledge of a local market and constant exposure to the local media. Many Belgians, Canadians and Swiss speak ‘French’, although any Parisian would happily debate this over a Ricard (Pastis) or two. However, the TV, Newspapers and culture in Brussels, Quebec, Lyons and Lausanne vary considerably.
Transcreation and Centralization
By Gordon Husbands | International marcoms, Transcreation | No comment yet
Transcreation - a Trojan Horse for centralization?
Is transcreation just a Trojan horse used by Global VPs of Marketing to wrest global campaign production responsibility away from the countries where they will be executed?
I guess the answer depends on how paranoid you are or how dictatorial your VP of Marketing is. My own view is that in the present competitive, budget constrained environment, both transcreation and centralization have individual merit when considering the best approach to global marketing campaign production and execution.
First and foremost transcreation requires an intimate knowledge of a local market and constant exposure to the local media. Many Belgians, Canadians and Swiss speak ‘French’, although any Parisian would happily debate this over a Ricard (Pastis) or two. However, the TV, Newspapers and culture in Brussels, Quebec, Lyons and Lausanne vary considerably.
QED: any creative translators participating in the transcreation process should reside in their native country.
Anyone for Pastis?
There has been a significant trend towards centralization of production of global marketing campaigns. Cost, time-to-market and control of messaging are all reasons regularly cited by clients I meet. My experience tells me that the management culture and organizational structure of the individual large international corporation does play a large part in this decision too.
It is not surprising that where a company has a strong directive, command and control approach to management and the brand the more likely it is to be heavily centralized. I am sure several brands spring immediately to mind?
What can be centralized? Well pretty much everything. What should be centralized? That will depend on several factors of which budget, time-to-market and availability of local resources are but three.
I regularly see the following aspects of global campaigns centralized:
- Creative and copywriting
- Production and resizing
- Media planning and purchase
- Supply chain management
- Transcreation management (but not the transcreation activity)
- SEO
- CRM
As a rough rule of thumb: if you operate in a few countries and have a few products then you can deliver quite happily without going down the centralization route. Most marketing activities can be done for each country, by each country, based on central guidelines. The opposite is obviously true where you operate in 20 plus countries and have several products and continuous campaigns.
The tricky part is moving from one approach to the other! As for centralized transcreation activity – which is championed by the few – I would, like the cliché, avoid it like the plague. But then again I have never been a big fan of the committee approach to transcreation.
Transcreation at London’s premier marketing technology event
By Gordon Husbands | Transcreation | No comment yet
Over 2 days last week some 9,392 digital marketers jammed themselves into Technology For Marketing & Advertising (TFM&A) in London’s West End. In line with modern event style exhibitors and presentation theaters shared the extensive exhibition space. This approach works well and generates a constant stream of traffic around the exhibitions. Plus it is fair to say that few people are prepared to slog around an event that is simply a vendor-fest – they are expect much more.
Reflecting the prevailing trends the presentations were, in the main, focused on SEO, Social Media, CRM and email marketing. Inevitably there were a few presentations that should have been labeled – “Government Heath warning- Blatant Sales Pitch”.
Transcreation – now you’re talking my language!
By Gordon Husbands | Transcreation | 8 responses so far
Well it will neither offer salvation to the planet nor the sinner. If you are an international marketer, working on global advertising or brand development or in the localization business you may have come across the term before.
Here are a few random definitions from around the ‘net:
“…a packet of services aimed at those operating in the advertising sector, including translation, localisation and copy editing services.”
“…is a form of translation, closer to copywriting, resulting in a text linguistically and culturally adapted for its intended audience. Transcreated material is supposed to have the same impact on the target audience as the original source text.”
“… a bundle of services designed for clients operating in the advertising sector. It consists of the complete set of translation, localization and copyediting services. Transcreation is a more complex service as it involves the creativity and discipline of professionals whose core activity is content adaptation.”
