Translation and transcreation are different jobs with different success tests: translation is judged on whether it says the same thing, transcreation on whether it does the same thing. Most hospitality estates need both, and the decision is made per surface rather than per supplier.

This is the process question — which treatment a given piece of content needs, and how each one is actually carried out. The supplier question, which kind of partner to appoint, is a separate one and is covered in translation agency or transcreation agency.

Below: what each discipline is, a decision table, the factors that settle borderline cases, and how the two run in practice on the same project.

Key Takeaways

  • Translation is the right answer more often than agencies admit. Policies, terms, safety and
    allergen notices and operational instructions should be rendered accurately and plainly.
  • Transcreation is the right answer where the content has to make someone feel something, and
    there it is not a premium version of translation but a different activity with a different
    brief.
  • Four factors settle the borderline cases: what the content is for, how much brand voice it
    carries, how much it costs to be wrong, and whether a literal rendering would read as foreign.

What each one is

Direct translation converts content from one language into another, preserving the original message as closely as the target language allows. It is judged on accuracy and completeness. Done well it is precise, fast and comparatively inexpensive, and on a great deal of hotel content it is exactly what is wanted. Its limitation is that it stays close to the source by design, so it carries across cultural assumptions along with the words.

We define transcreation as “creative translation”, a process that adapts the emotional expressions and contextual relevance of the source message that goes beyond literal meaning of words. Four things have to arrive together for it to work: language, emotion, culture and your brand’s tone of voice.

The relationship between them is not a quality ladder. A cancellation policy transcreated into something lyrical is as wrong as a tagline translated word for word. They are different tools, and the skill is in the sorting. The broader discipline that contains both — adapting everything around the words as well — is localisation, which we define in what localisation means.

Which treatment, for which content

Direct translation Transcreation
The question it answers What does this say? Does this still persuade?
Latitude Stay close to the source Depart from the source where staying
close would weaken it
Who writes it Subject-matter translators Linguists who write consumer-
facing copy in their own language
Brief contains Source files, language pair, deadline Also the purpose, the
audience, the brand’s tone, and what must not change
Review step Proofreading against the source Client review against brand
intent, then update and approval
Typical hotel content Rates, policies, cancellation terms, accessibility and
allergen notices, operational instructions, booking confirmations		 Homepage, destination
and property copy, room and suite descriptions, campaign lines, menus, eDMs
Measured by Accuracy and completeness Whether it works on the audience it
now addresses
Typical failure A mistranslation Copy that is correct and flat

A worked illustration

Consider a campaign built on the line “Feel at Home”.

Rendered directly, it is accurate everywhere. In several markets it is also the wrong proposition, because a hotel stay is positioned as an escape from home rather than a continuation of it — and in those markets the line quietly argues against the booking it is meant to win. There is no translation error to find. A proofreader would pass it.

What transcreation does here is go back to what the line is for — the promise of ease and familiarity in an unfamiliar place — and build a new line that makes that promise in terms the market recognises. The English line is the brief, not the text.

That is why transcreation briefs ask what the content is for. Without the intent, a writer can only reproduce the words, which is the one thing that does not work here.

The four factors that settle borderline cases

Most content sorts itself. For the rest, four questions decide it.

  1. What is this content for? If its job is to inform, translate. If its job is to
    make someone want something, transcreate.
  2. How much brand voice does it carry? Copy a reader would recognise as yours
    needs rebuilding in each language. Copy that could belong to any operator does not.
  3. What does being wrong cost? On compliance and safety text the cost of
    invention is high and the cost of plainness is nil, so translate. On a homepage the cost of
    flatness is the booking.
  4. Would a literal rendering read as foreign? If the sentence structure, the
    comparisons or the humour would mark the page as imported, the decision is already made.

Applied across an estate, these four produce a marked-up content inventory — which is the document that makes competing proposals comparable, as what hotel translation costs and what drives the number sets out.

How transcreation is actually done

The creative half rests on a research half, and the research comes first.

Before anything is written, the work is to establish how this brand should sound in this language and what vocabulary it will use. That means reading the brand’s own materials, settling the style and tone, and uncovering the market-specific technical jargon and colloquial terms the content will need — the words a reader in that market actually uses for the thing being described, which are frequently not the dictionary words.

Only then does the writing happen, and it happens against a Translation Memory built for the brand, so that decisions already taken are reused rather than re-litigated. The client’s own market teams then review it before anything is published.

How the work runs

A supplier that can name its steps can tell you which one you are in. Ours runs in six:

  1. Understand the Project Brief. The content, the markets, the purpose and the constraints.
  2. Pre-Transcreation Study. Reviewing brand materials, style and tone, and uncovering the market-specific technical jargon and colloquial terms the content will need.
  3. Transcreation. The writing, drawing on the Translation Memory built for your brand.
  4. Client Review. Your own market teams read the content before it is live.
  5. Update and Approval. Revisions, then sign-off.
  6. Final Delivery. Into the system it has to live in, or as artwork ready to print.

Steps two and four are the ones brands are tempted to drop, and they are the two that decide the outcome. Dropping the Pre-Transcreation Study means arguing about vocabulary after forty pages have been written in it. Dropping Client Review means the first person to judge the copy is a guest. More on making the review loop work is in collaborating with your transcreation partner, and on checking the output in how to check translation quality before it goes live.

What we can evidence

Engagements where both treatments ran on the same programme.

  • For Frasers Hospitality we relaunched the website in 15 languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Arabic and German — over half a million words in eight weeks, integrated into the client’s Adobe Experience Manager system, alongside CRM content, sales brochures and fact sheets.
  • For COMO Hotels & Resorts we localised website content into 7 languages — Arabic, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, French, German, Russian and Spanish — publishing into the Drupal back end alongside the client’s digital agency, and extended the programme to CRM content, in-room directories, spa and F&B menus and press releases.
  • For Resorts World Sentosa we are the appointed language service provider to the Digital and Regional Marketing teams, covering Sitecore websites, leaflets, in-market brochures, display ads and eDMs in Chinese, Japanese, Bahasa Indonesia, Tamil, Vietnamese, Thai and more, with a Translation Memory maintained per language.
  • For Changi Airport Group we won a government public tender to take web content and literature from English into Simplified Chinese for Chinese leisure and business travellers. Our Shanghai editorial team researched the travel apps those travellers actually use, and we reviewed the client’s existing Chinese content as part of the work.

The cost argument is about the programme, not the first invoice. A Translation Memory dedicated to your brand records how your content has been handled in each language, so repeat and updated material draws on work already paid for. Transcreated copy that is right first time avoids the redo cycle that literal translation sets off. And one partner across every touchpoint and market removes the coordination overhead of several suppliers, each interpreting your tone differently. Our clients cite those Translation Memory savings as one of the reasons they stay.

At IPPWORLD, we are an award-winning transcreation agency that specialises in creative translation and marketing localisation for the hospitality, travel, lifestyle and retail sectors. The award is Best Hospitality Creative Translation & Localisation Agency 2019, at the LUXlife Hospitality Awards. We have worked in this field since 1994, from Singapore, with an editorial team in Shanghai, and we work in 30 languages — 18 Asian, 10 European and 2 Middle Eastern.

Conclusion

The useful question is not whether transcreation is better than translation. It is which of them each item on your content inventory needs. Get that sorting right and you fund persuasion where persuasion is the job, render accuracy where accuracy is the job, and stop paying premium rates to adapt a cancellation policy.

Get it wrong in the cheap direction and the homepage reads as imported. Get it wrong in the expensive direction and you have bought creative writing for your terms and conditions. The first mistake is the one that costs bookings.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between translation and transcreation?
Translation converts the words and is judged on accuracy against the source. Transcreation rewrites persuasive content so it still persuades the new audience, and is judged on whether it works in-market — which sometimes means departing from the original line entirely. They are different jobs, not two grades of the same job.
Is transcreation just expensive translation?
No. It is a different activity with a different brief, a different kind of writer and a different review step. A transcreation brief has to say what the content is for, who it is addressing and what must not change; a translation brief needs the files, the language pair and the deadline.
When is direct translation the right choice?
Whenever accuracy is the whole requirement: rates, policies, cancellation terms, accessibility and allergen notices, operational instructions, booking confirmations. On that content, creative latitude is a liability, and translating it plainly is both correct and cheaper.
How do I decide which treatment a page needs?
Ask four questions: what is the content for; how much of your brand voice does it carry; what does being wrong cost; and would a literal rendering read as foreign. If its job is to make someone want something and it sounds like you, it needs transcreation.
Can one supplier do both?
It should, because most estates need both and sorting them is part of the work. What to check is whether the supplier prices them differently — a single blended rate across an entire estate usually means they have not sorted it — and who writes the marketing half.
What goes into a transcreation brief?
The purpose of the content, the audience and market, the brand’s tone of voice, the facts that must not change, any terminology already settled, and where the content will be published. The English copy is an input to that brief rather than the brief itself.

Send us your content inventory and we will mark up which items need rendering and which need rewriting. More on the category is on our marketing translation page, the craft on transcreation, the process on How We Work, and the vocabulary in our glossary. Related reading: translation agency or transcreation agency, creativity and emotion in transcreation, what localisation means and AI translation versus human transcreation.