Localisation vs. Transcreation: What’s the difference?

Whether you’re part of a firmly established business or are just starting out, expanding to new territories is about more than just translating content. Adapting your material to meet the unique cultural context of your new audience is an important piece of the puzzle – and that’s where localisation and transcreation services can help.

But what exactly are localisation and transcreation, and how are they different? Read on to find out more about these useful services and how you can use them to gain the upper hand when it comes to market expansion.

Key Ingredients for Global Growth

Localisation refers to the process of adapting a product or service for a new region or culture. This requires a deep understanding of the target culture to produce a campaign that recognises and responds to the region’s unique traits and characteristics.

Examples of localisation are all around us, from the multinational clothing stores we shop at, to the international fast-food restaurants we save for a cheeky treat. Whether it’s McDonald’s spicy veggie burgers in India or Netflix’s country-specific digital content, localisation is an essential part of successful commerce in our globalised world.

The Right Skills for the Job

As a certified translation agency, we can work with you to meet all of your localisation needs. Our translators all work in their native language, meaning they have the skills required to develop a marketing campaign or website copy that speaks directly to your audience.

Those localisation skills were on full display when we worked with BookTrust, a UK charity that works to inspire a love of reading in children and their families. They needed to reach out to non-English speaking families across the UK, representing a range of 28 different languages and cultures. 

For our localisation team, this meant adapting BookTrust’s message to meet the needs of their audience. Our team were able to seamlessly carry through the original tone, inference and expression to develop campaigns that each culture could relate to.

Breaking New Ground with Transcreation

Localisation is a fantastic tool to reach new audiences, but pairing it with transcreation can make your message even stronger. Transcreation involves taking the original message or objectives of a business strategy and reconstituting the content in a way that makes the most sense for your new audience.

Transcreation involves giving more freedom to the content team and can lead to impressive results. Whereas localisation is an important step in ensuring your original copy makes sense for your new audience, transcreation can help to build new pathways to success. 

A Perfect Pairing

Accurate transcreation will leave you with a product or campaign that retains the key messages of the original but adapts it to include the unique perspective of the target region, too. The result is exciting and innovative; a product that stands on its own two feet for the target audience, but retains a clear connection to the primary campaign.

So there we have it! While there are a few key differences between localisation and transcreation, they often work best together as complementary solutions to reach new target markets. If you’d like to learn more about the ways localisation and translation could help your business flourish, why not get in touch with us today? You can reach us by phone on 01727 812725, email us at team@atlas-translations.co.uk.