Most cultural failures in marketing translation are not the famous ones. They are quiet: copy that is accurate, inoffensive and subtly signals that the brand does not know this market. That version costs more in aggregate than the occasional headline blunder, because it happens on every page and nobody reports it.

The loud failures are worth guarding against, and the controls that prevent them are the same controls that prevent the quiet ones. This piece sets out what those controls are, where the risk actually sits, and how to brief work so the question gets asked before publication rather than after.

Key Takeaways

  • The common failure is tone, not taboo. Register, formality and what a market finds reassuring
    go wrong far more often than imagery or symbolism.
  • Cultural judgement has to sit with people who live in the market and write in the language.
    It cannot be applied from head office with a checklist.
  • The two controls that catch almost everything are a research step before writing and a client
    review step before publishing. Both are the steps most often dropped.

Where the risk actually sits

Ranked by how often it causes a problem, rather than by how dramatic the problem is.

Risk How often What it looks like
Register and formality Constant Copy that is too familiar or too distant
for the market, so the brand reads as presumptuous or cold
Untransferable comparison Very common “Like Tuscany, but
quieter” — a reference the reader does not hold
Humour Common Wordplay rendered literally, producing a line that is
flat or faintly odd
Season and calendar Common, and cheap to prevent A winter campaign in a
tropical market; a promotion timed to the wrong holiday
Imagery and colour Occasional Colour and photography carrying associations
the brand did not intend in that market
Symbolism and taboo Rare, high cost The headline category: a gesture,
symbol or religious reference used without local knowledge
Regulated claims Rare, high cost A claim that is permissible in the source
market and not in the target one

The top three rows are where almost all of the damage is, and all three are writing problems rather than cultural-sensitivity problems. They are fixed by having the copy written by somebody who markets in that language, not by adding a review checklist to a translation.

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 two controls that catch almost everything

Research before writing, and the client’s own market teams before publishing.

The research step. Before any copy is produced, the work is to read the brand’s materials, settle the style and tone for this language, and uncover the market-specific technical jargon and colloquial terms the content will need. That is where season, calendar, register and untransferable references get caught — while they are still cheap to change, rather than after forty pages have been written on the wrong premise.

The review step. The brand’s own market teams read the content as readers before it is published. They are the only people positioned to say that a line is technically fine and still not how anyone speaks. Dropping this step means the first reader qualified to judge the copy is a customer.

Both are formal steps in how we run the work, not optional extras. What to look for during review is in how to check translation quality before it goes live.

What to put in the brief

  • The markets, named individually rather than as a region. “Asia” is not a market.
  • The written language per market, not just the spoken one — Simplified Chinese for the mainland and Traditional Chinese for Taiwan or Hong Kong are different deliverables.
  • What the content is for, so the writer knows what has to survive and what may change.
  • The claims that are legally load-bearing, so they are rendered exactly rather than rewritten.
  • The brand’s tone, with examples of copy you consider on-brand and copy you do not.
  • Who reviews it in each market, and by when.

A brief that contains those six things rarely produces a cultural problem. A brief that contains a language pair and a deadline frequently does. The fuller treatment is in collaborating with your transcreation partner.

The compliance edge

Some cultural risk is legal risk, and it needs translating exactly rather than adapting.

Advertising standards, claim substantiation rules and consumer-protection requirements differ by market, and a line that is permissible in one is sometimes not in another. The rule we work to is that regulated statements — performance, ingredient, origin and safety claims, together with price and availability conditions — are rendered precisely and checked locally. Creative latitude belongs to the copy around them. The longer treatment is in the ethical and legal nuances.

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.

What we can evidence

Programmes where content had to be right across several markets simultaneously.

  • 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.
  • For Millennium Hotels & Resorts we are an appointed language service provider, producing brand content for China, Taiwan, Japan, the UAE, Spain, Italy and France on Sitecore, with quality assurance before go-live.
  • 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 FWD, the Omne app was localised into 7 Asian languages — Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese for Hong Kong, Japanese, Vietnamese, Khmer, Thai and Bahasa Indonesia — integrated into the app’s content management system and checked linguistically so that every market could launch simultaneously across APAC.

The Changi engagement is the clearest example of local judgement being the deliverable: our Shanghai editorial team researched the travel apps Chinese travellers actually use, and we reviewed the client’s existing Chinese content as part of the work — which is a different activity from translating the English brief accurately.

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

Cultural safety in marketing translation is not a sensitivity audit bolted onto a translation. It is a consequence of who writes the copy and who reads it before it ships.

Put the writing with people who market in that language, research the market before the first page, keep regulated claims literal, and give the market teams a real review window. The dramatic failures become unlikely, and the quiet ones — the ones actually costing you bookings — stop happening too.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you avoid cultural mistakes in translated marketing content?
Two controls do most of the work: a research step before writing, where tone, terminology, season and local references are settled, and a review step before publishing, where the brand’s own market teams read the copy as readers. Adding a sensitivity checklist to a finished translation catches far less.
What is the most common cultural error?
Register. Copy that is too familiar or too distant for the market, so the brand reads as presumptuous or cold. It is not offensive and it does not get reported — it just quietly underperforms, which is why it survives for years.
Can a checklist prevent cultural blunders?
Partly. A checklist catches the mechanical items — season, calendar, colour, formats, regulated claims. It cannot catch register, untransferable comparisons or humour, because those require someone who writes in the language to notice them.
Should regulated claims be transcreated?
No. Performance, ingredient, origin and safety claims, and price and availability conditions, should be rendered precisely and checked against local rules. Creative latitude belongs to the copy around them. This is the one area where staying literal is the professional answer.
Who should review translated marketing copy?
People who market to that audience, in that market, reading it as readers rather than proofreaders. A proofreader checks it against the source; a market reader notices that it is correct and nobody speaks like that. Both have a place, and the second is the one usually missing.
Is ‘Asia’ a market for briefing purposes?
No, and treating it as one is a reliable source of error. Markets are named individually, and so are written languages — Simplified Chinese for the mainland and Traditional Chinese for Taiwan or Hong Kong are separate deliverables, as are Malay for Malaysia and Malay for Singapore.

Send us a campaign and the markets you want it in, and we will tell you which parts carry cultural risk and which parts simply need rendering. More on the craft is on our transcreation page and the category on marketing translation. Related reading: transcreation in hotels and hospitality, creativity and emotion in transcreation, the mistakes that make translated content feel unnatural and Chinese-market hotel marketing.