Rather than the theoretical approach taken in another blog, here I’d like to provide a few practical illustrations of cases where “conventional” translation is not appropriate and where Transcreation is called for instead.

With the debate about translation and transcreation still in full swing, it occurs to me that while it is tempting to see this as two activities along the same line, progressing in a linear fashion and merging into each other, we might have to recognize that this transition may not be smooth.

A report published in November 2019 by EF Education First, a Swedish company based in Switzerland that runs some 600 language schools in 50 countries, claims that of the four largest economies in the euro zone, meaning France, Germany, Spain and Italy, “only Germany speaks English well”.

Gender equality and gender gap is clearly a topic that will be around for a while yet.

The “gender star” has seen a sudden rise in German typography, where it previously acted as an indicator for footnotes only and was therefore rarely seen outside of academic papers.

Shopping for fashion was a much coveted activity BC (before Covid-19). On my visits to Zurich, along the Bahnhofstrasse, I would see people laden with shopping bags from the high-street brands, Mango, Zara, Massimo Dutti, as well as those of luxury brands like Bally, Luis Vuitton, Bulgari and Celine and Prada.

The sacrilege of translating into anything but your mother tongue.

So what is transcreation? From where I stand, it is a translation that captures the spirit and the emotions rather than just the informational content of the source.

I had hoped that by the time this was out of the oven the UK would be ending its lockdown.