It’s easy to answer such an obvious question: transcreation and copywriting are not the same thing. Both are, however, services that focus on marketing and advertising, which is why they are often confused. If you want to be sure what each one is and when you need them, keep on reading this article.
What are the differences between transcreation and copywriting?
In order to explain what the differences are between the two, each one should be defined.
What is copywriting?
Copywriting is a persuasive writing technique in which the objective is for the target audience to carry out a specific action. This action could be purchasing a product, hiring a service or getting likes on social media. It is about convincing, for which it is necessary to be clear on the answers to these questions:
- Who do we want to convince?
- What are their needs?
- How will we meet those needs?
No embellishment or beating around the bush. A copywriter uses clear and concise language that is appealing and awakens the emotion that will carry out the intended objective.
What is transcreation?
Transcreation is the perfect adaptation of the message to the context, beyond the words that are used to communicate it. It aims at achieving the same objective by creating a specific and defined adaptation, in such a way that the original idea is understood in the same way all around the world, and it feels as if it has been imagined for the first time in each one of the target languages.
Transcreation in advertising goes further than copywriting, as it requires more extensive work that includes a quality professional translator, lots of creativity and being highly disciplined in order to be faithful to the original message and keeping the same meaning, even if that means changing things up.
Transcreation: going further to feel at home
Launching a product or service in the market entails lots of preliminary work in which marketing and publicity departments have to establish the best strategy and define the actions to be carried out. The name of the new product or service is decided and the content is created for different media channels: billboards, broadcast media, promotions, etc. Designers, editors, copywriters and other professionals get down to work.
Now imagine the company wants to internationalize that product and introduce it in several countries around the world. Do you think that translating the product’s name, the claim or the content is enough? Obviously not. That is when transcreation in marketing starts making sense and an expert in transcreation becomes essential.
That is the big difference with copywriting. Transcreation is not just translating, although translation is carried out, and it’s not just writing creative texts in other languages either. The transcreator uses all of these tools to make the customer in each country grasp the message as if it were their own. It’s a work of absolute immersion into the culture and the idiosyncrasies of the place.
That is why we mentioned that transcreation combines creativity and faithfulness to the original. A transcreation specialist sometimes creates completely new content which is different from the original in order to maintain the meaning, tone and strategy decided by the client.
If as a company you wish to expand your product or service internationally, don’t hesitate to hire a transcreation and copywriting service such as the one offered by Linguaserve, where we count on experienced transcreators with a broad knowledge of different languages and cultures.
