A close translation, creative translation or transcreation. Which one does your company need?

If you do not work in the translation business, you probably think “a translation is a translation. It doesn’t matter who I hire to translate my text, the result will be the same.” This is not true. Depending on the kind of text you want translated, it can matter a lot who you hire, and what instructions you give them!

Very generally we can distinguish three “levels” of translation:

Close translation

For example translations of technical manuals, legal and medical texts. It isn’t important that the translation sounds great, it just needs to be a clear translation of the source text.

Creative translation

For example translations for marketing and literature. These should not only be a translation, but they should also sound good, run smoothly and be right for the target audience. That last bit is called localisation. That’s when a text is adapted to the target audience in a certain country. For example, a French translator might change the sentence “a typical breakfast with a bowl of cornflakes” to “a typical breakfast with a croissant” and a Dutch translator may change it to “a typical breakfast with a cheese sandwich”. Because otherwise it would not be a typical breakfast for the readers in those countries!

Transcreation

For example slogans, scripts, poetry and lyrics. Here a translator almost ceases to be a translator, and becomes an artist.

Interlex Language Services is specialised in the second group, creative translations. We will try our hand at transcreation every now and then, too. We’ll ask our most talented translators for this, because it really is a craft. We don’t do dry translations, we prefer to leave that to others!

If you have a text that could use a creative translation, request a quote now and see for yourself that a good translation need not be an expensive one!

Interlex is a translation company that specialises in creative translations: translations that run smoothly and are just right for the target audience.

Though we offer more than 100 language combinations, we are an especially good choice for translations into Danish, Dutch and Swedish.