Marketing Translation Services for Global Campaigns

Marketing translation sits at the intersection of language and creativity. A direct translation preserves the words but loses the effect. Transcreation takes the intent and emotional charge of the original and rebuilds it in the target language using idioms, references, and cultural cues that work for that audience. The result is copy that sounds like it was written for that market from the start. Take Haribo's German jingle 'Haribo macht Kinder froh und Erwachsene ebenso': same promise, same rhyme and rhythm intact, reworked into Italian as 'Haribo è la bontà che si gusta ad ogni età' and into matching cadences across other languages. Or Coca-Cola's 'Share a Coke' campaign, adapted in over eighty markets with different name lists; in China, personal names were swapped for appellatives like 'Classmate' and 'Bestie' to respect local naming conventions. Mitsubishi quietly rebranded the Pajero as the Montero in Spanish-speaking markets after the original name picked up unintended slang associations. The cautionary side is just as important: HSBC's 2009 'Assume Nothing' campaign was rendered as 'Do Nothing' in several markets, costing roughly $10M to rebrand globally as 'The world's local bank.' That gap between literal accuracy and lived meaning is why transcreation exists as a discipline distinct from translation.

Our linguists and marketing specialists work together on every project. We cover press releases, product catalogs, billboard and OOH copy, advertising material, social media campaigns, brand voice guidelines, and survey campaigns. Beyond the visible copy, we localize metadata, schema.org structured data, hreflang tagging, and SEO keywords so your brand is findable in local search, not just readable. Our 50+ language pairs are staffed by native-speaking specialists, many of whom hold dual qualifications in marketing communications and translation. CSA Research's 'Can't Read, Won't Buy' study found that 76% of online shoppers prefer to buy in their own language, and 40% will not purchase from sites in other languages, so the marketing translation budget pays for itself when the localization is done well.