Pharmaceutical Transcreation Case Study

What is transcreation?

Transcreation is the translation and re-creation of content. The output is fully adapted for the given target audience in terms of language, imagery and symbolism, while maintaining the intent of the message.

The Client: International advertising agency specializing in healthcare branding

The Challenge: Transcreate a series of advertising concepts for a pharmaceutical product from a US English source text for the Italian, German, and UK markets. Each concept included a headline, body copy and tagline . Additionally, a technical product profile had to be translated in conjunction with the concepts.

The Solution:  The project manager discussed the copywriter’s intent at length with the client, including the highlighted product’s features and the message imagery, and created a detailed transcreation brief for the linguists. The project manager recruited translators with experience in copywriting and transcreation.

In addition to the transcreated text, a back translation was delivered, along with comments, so the client could understand what the linguists actually did and what motivated their choice of words.

Different translators worked on the product descriptions, as the content was highly technical in terms of medical terminology.

The files were delivered on schedule and provided clear, creative solutions to branding the product for three new markets.

Client Benefits: CETRA provided clear, targeted messaging, fully adapted for the Italian, German, and UK markets to support the client’s campaign.  By engaging in an open dialogue with the client, CETRA was able to understand the specific needs and requirements of the project and select the optimal team of linguists to transcreate and translate the material.

The client had a single point of contact at CETRA, ensuring that the two translation tasks were handled efficiently.